Finding Your Voice Week Day Four: Stop Posing

The text I’m about to show you has no actual meaning. It was generated by a computer program specifically designed to use big words without substance. Ready? Let’s go.

“Class is fundamentally a legal fiction,” says Lyotard. Many sublimations concerning the postcapitalist paradigm of context may be discovered. Therefore, the characteristic theme of the works of Rushdie is the difference between narrativity and sexual identity.” – The Postmodern Generator

The Dada Engine can generate an infinite number of meaningless texts. It was created by an academic who’d grown tired of the pretentiousness he was seeing in the industry. Another academic created a similar engine for philosophy because, “the philosophical discourse remains detached, meaningless, and utterly oblivious.”

I once edited a boyfriend’s honour’s philosophy paper. It was as Dadaesque as the Dada engine. It soon came out that he was merely shuffling the sentences of his textbooks around. He had no actual idea what he was talking about. This is a common problem, especially among new writers. They’re so busy posing they forget that writing is supposed to have a soul. It’s supposed to be incomparably human. It’s supposed to connect people.

Let’s look at poetry’s version of the Dada Engine. This was written by a human named Mark Slaughter, but it has a similar effect nonetheless:

> I kissed the rim:
> Kissing me, a cool sophistication:
> Cut glass; leaded class
> Fashioned as a ballerina
> Tilting in her obligation,
> Out to please –
> A woman readied –
> Me to tease!

> O! the dream:

> A rivulet of garnet dawn
> Now drawn thro’ lips of want,
> Poised in deep anticipation…

Do rivulets of garnet dawns put an image in your head? Probably not.

Do we say “thro’” when we talk? No.

Do we use lines like “readied me to tease” in everyday conversation? No.

Does putting the words in that order support clarity or effect? No again.

Do you feel more when a poem uses archaic words and sentence structure? Definitely not.

Slaughter’s poetry is pretentious and annoying. There was no reason whatsoever to use archaicism in 2011 when the poem was written. He did it because he was posing, and not because he thought it might connect better with his audience. His goal was to earn admiration, not understanding.

Understanding is the grit and meat of our lives. It’s not lofty or fancy. It’s bread and butter, cells and blood. Stop trying to earn admiration. It will only prevent your true voice from scraping through. Just be you.