Word Choices Week Day Three: The Sounds Matter

The best lecture I ever attended was run by South African writers, Antjie Krog and Ingrid de Kok—both celebrated poets in their own rights. For this lecture, though, they were discussing translation. Both had translated the work of one of our greatest poets, Ingrid Jonker. Krog and de Kok had taken on the translation challenge in their own ways, so they explained why they had chosen the words they had. They were translating from Afrikaans, a language I can passably understand. Passably is the operative word. I can understand you if we’re talking about shopping trips and relationships, but if you’re reading me Ingrid Jonker poetry, I mostly just hear a series of guttural sounds.

But when Krog and de Kok were reading their word choices, I didn’t need better Afrikaans skills. I could hear what the words felt. I could detect their rhythm and the feelings they were intended to evoke. I could tell you why Krog’s choices were better than de Kok’s.

All great writing should have that quality. Your word choices must be so perfect they will impress themselves upon your reader even if they don’t speak your language. Such is the power of assonance and dissonance. In my view, no poet had as much control over those two effects than Ted Hughes. Yes, it always seems to come back to Hughes for me.

Sorry.

He spent a lifetime trying to understand how the sounds of words affected his audience, but no, I will NOT discuss Ted Hughes again. <Picks up book by Antjie Krog>

Try this Krog poem on for size:

Casually you ask, “So how does it feel to be
a grandma? And I thought to myself, oh god,
my child, what would you have me say?
“Very old thank you”? or “I don’t
get a cock past my lips anymore.” […]

Grandma has such a poo sound, sounds so blubbery
so almost tubbery, it mumbles so cuntless, so toothless
inaudibly that it rips your nose wide open for
grandma-bashing and suddenly you smell the entire
written media unaware of wild yam and hrt.

Children’s books are full of modern moms with clogs
buying pizzas and dads bathing babies, but in the
background somewhere inevitably lurks misshapen
a grandma anachronistically in Dr Scholl’s shoes
joyously knitting.

What does “tubbery” mean, you ask? Well, I just don’t know. I don’t think it’s a word at all, and yet we know exactly what she’s trying to communicate with it. This is why Krog is such a great translator. She doesn’t merely choose words by their meaning. She chooses them by their rhythm and the meanings their sounds seem to suggest.

It’s not the Jabberwocky, but it’s Jabberwockyish enough to explain why sound matters—not just in poems, but fiction as well.