Competition | 15 August 2009

In Competition No. 2608 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of adjectives. While the inspiration for last week’s challenge was a verb-hating French doctor of letters, this time around you can blame Ezra Pound. In The Spirit of Romance he states, ‘The true poet is most easily distinguished from the false, when he trusts himself to the simplest expression, and when he writes without adjectives.’

The entry was a spirited and magnificently unPoundian celebration of this oft-maligned part of speech. Commendations to Martin Parker and Melissa Balmain. They were narrowly squeezed out by the winners, below, who are rewarded with £30 apiece. The bonus fiver goes to Bill Greenwell.

No noun (or pronoun) would go down as great
If neglected by adjectives, stripped of their garnish:
If you can’t cadge an adj. to provide you some varnish,
Your prose will lack punch, and be plain as a plate.
 
Simenon claimed you should winkle them out,
But Maigret’s a dull dog, neither style nor panache:
Dour and powerless, under the lash,
Maigret needs adjectives — of that there’s no doubt.
 
Decorative, eloquent, demented, splenetic —
Whether crouched between commas or bunched up or clustered —
Where adjectives gather, the language cuts mustard:
Nouns leave the ground, energetic, balletic.
 
Verbs may have verve, but an adjective’s hammer
Produces the sparks from the writerly anvil:
Try Barker (the one who begins Harley Granville-),
And revel at once in the glamour of grammar.
Bill Greenwell

Most popular

Brendan O’Neill

The moment in the ‘grooming gangs’ debate that shamed Jess Phillips

And what made England’s mountains ‘green’ or April showers ‘sweet’?
The adjective! It crowns the noun and renders it complete!
How dull Limpopo’s banks would seem had Kipling not been keen
To turn them ‘greasy’, make them ‘great’ and colour them ‘grey-green’.
A ‘pea-green’ boat, as Lear made clear, is more than just a boat
And any note, to be of note, should be a ‘five-pound’ note.