Excess verbiage

Because verbiage is by definition an excess of words, the phrases excess verbiage and excessive verbiage are redundant.  Notice this example from a writing guide at George Mason University, and also the examples provided. All too wordy and pretentious.

Excess verbiage
Effective writing requires elimination of excess verbiage. The value of concise writing is stated in quotes below from some noted authors.
‘The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.’ Hans Hoffman
‘Often I think writing is sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.’ F. Scott Fitzgerald
‘I believe more in the scissors that I do in the pencil.’ Truman Capote
One technique for eliminating excess verbiage is to scrutinize a wordy passage, underline those phrases that contain hard information, and then rewrite the passage using only the underlined portions.

4054

Poetry Thursday--a betrayal of trust

Last week I took a writing class at the Rhein Center here in Lakeside with Patricia Mote. One of our assignments was to write an editorial, poem or song lyrics about a fallen person in public life--a president, sports figure or celebrity. I chose Bob Taft (Robert A. Taft, II), our former two-term governor of Ohio, who by the end of his term was ranked 50th of the 50 governors.

He bears one of the most famous names in American politics--Taft. His Taft fore bearers have included a president, senators, supreme court judges, secretaries of war, as well as state politicians. He left office entangled in an ethics scandal (quite mild by standards of other politicians), and he and his wife went to Africa where he had served in the Peace Corps as a young man. He will be at the University of Dayton this fall.

Poor Bob Taft
by Norma Bruce

Gone are the days when our Taft name was strong and great.
Gone are my state house friends who also met my fate.
Gone from Columbus to far off Tanzania,
Peace Corps memories and far off Tanzania.

I'm going, I'm going, this life is still a draft--
I read the Zogby ethics polling, poor Bob Taft.

Why do I weep so, it can now not be improved,
George Bush is my eleventh cousin once removed,
And I'm the ninth cousin of Richard Bruce Cheney;
Yes, in my family, Vice President Cheney.

I'm going, going, before I get too daft--
I hear the ethics charges tolling poor Bob Taft.

4034

Jamming in Lakeside

Big power outage last night, and more storms rolling across northern Ohio. I'll have to turn off the laptop soon. Today I hope to sign up for an afternoon class at Lorenzo's Culinary School. It's on making peach jam. Isn't that a great idea for a one shot class? Registration is limited, so I might not get in.

We decided to skip the program last night (it was near 90), and walked down to the dock where we visited with a neighbor and two other teachers from the Rhein Center. The lake was such an unusual color reflected for a hazy sky--almost white. Many kids were fishing with their dads--always a fun sight. We got back to our cottage about 9 p.m. and realized the power was off. It was restored around midnight. So I suppose the program was interrupted too.

I'm enjoying the writing class--Pat is such a fun teacher. Yesterday one of the writers mentioned that she is in a book group with a newspaper journalist who told the group they are taught in journalism school to include opinion in their news reporting to make it more interesting. What a shame! I read a "news" story in today's WSJ about upcoming legislation for "universal" (i.e. compulsory and tax supported) pre-school. Although the reporter (and I use the term loosely) said there was research showing Head Start had not resulted in the hoped for outcomes (I think there is zero carry over after a year or two), everything she cited was pro-government pre-school. She particularly focused on wealthy supporters of the idea. There are so many ways to slant a story--and she (Deborah Solomon) had hit most of them. Having a mother who is married to the father, and who has finished high school, will get far better results than universal pre-school in closing the "rich-poor gap" a favorite economic term of today's journalists.

Update: The peach jam class was cancelled! Not enough people signed up. Also, the power outage was due to a fire in a transformer at Rts. 53 and 163. Most of the Marblehead peninsula lost power.

1352 Langston Hughes' Brass Spittoons

The assignment in writing class was to write a poem about some type of job we'd had in the past, and the teacher provided Langston Hughes "Brass Spittoons" as a sample and we spent some time discussing what he might have meant. Tricky stuff, deciphering what a poet might intend. Although there's little doubt that cleaning a spittoon wouldn't be much fun.

So I used Hughes' poem as a template for mine, following his style, to write about corn detasselling, the adolescent right of passage in the midwest. [I don't know enough html code to get this to space correctly--if anyone can suggest an indent that isn't a blockquote, let me know.]



Working for DeKalb Seed



Pull the tassels, girl.

Polo
Dixon
Stratford
Woosung

Pull those pollen tassels.
Mud between the rows
in between your toes.
Bugs on the stalks.

Mud in the boots
dirt in your gloves
Sunburned eye lids.
Dew on the leaves
Soaking your sleeves.
Forget where you are, girl.

Two weeks in hot July, girl.

Fifty cents
One dollar
Two dollar
Save it all

Buy shoes for the horse,
a dress of course
For a Saturday date.

Tug those tassels, girls

sisters
friends
sack lunches
dropped at the farm by moms.

Faster, faster arms aching
Get a rhythm, back be breaking
Water at the end of the row.

At night in your sleep, girl,

row on row
on cutting row
on green row
on glistening row

All night till dawn
Pull the tassel,
Hey, girl.