Me Talk Pretty One Day: Writing Pretty

David Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty One Day" reads like a story.  He narrates his experience returning to school as a middle-aged man to learn to speak French and "talk pretty".  His tone is compelling and distinctive, with a healthy dose of humor to keep the narration moving and the readers interested.  It seems entirely unlike the writing that is expected out of a college student.  However, a closer examination shows that he follows many of the guidelines laid out for college undergraduate writers in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey.

This can be seen through the language usage in the excerpt.  In Nuts and Bolts, Harvey denounces the so-called "pompous style" of writing, which dresses up our prose with big words and elaborate sentence structures (1).  He emphasizes simple, concise wording that tells the facts plainly (Harvey 9).  Throughout Sedaris' writing, his active and descriptive voice keeps the reader's attention through his plain language.  "The first day of class was nerve-wracking because I knew I'd be expected to perform," he tells us (Sedaris 11).  The facts are plainly stated and the words all familiar.  Many of his descriptions throughout the excerpt remain in such a form.  "When the phone rang, I ignored it.  If someone asked me a question, I pretended to be deaf" (Sedaris 14).  Sedaris shows us his actions and choices, keeping the situation clear and easy to follow.  Until the very end, the writing is simple and consistent, keeping the reader engaged and following without much difficulties.

Through his skillful use of language, Sedaris shares with his readers not only an essay but a memory.  His diction and plain vocabulary illustrate his meaning far better than if he had chosen to use complicated sentence structures, way too many prepositional phrases, and vocabulary that seemed to come from abusing a thesaurus.  Though it is uncertain whether David Sedaris eventually learned to "talk pretty someday," according to the The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, at least, he provides a great example at "writing pretty."

Poetry Analysis

Well, I didn't do as badly as I thought I would.  That's always a good thing.  And even as I worked through the five examples, I could tell that I was improving.  Still, there are specific things I should probably focus on, which will make my improvement easier, I think.

1.  Learn more poetry terms.

2.  Read every word carefully.

3.  Different kinds of figurative language.

4.  When looking at themes, focus on the big picture.

5.  Context, context, context.

Runner ups: Review meter and review poetry forms.

A lot of these are probably pretty self-explanatory.  Poetry terms.  Yes, I know this tripped me up a couple of times.  I'd never even heard of masculine vs. feminine rhyming before.  Half-rhymes I've heard of but aren't familiar with.  Same with consonance.  Knowing these terms would have been helpful in answering more of these questions correctly.

Reading every word is actually very important.  I'm a skimmer; I always have been when I read things for tests and such.  But it's way too easy to skip over something that might be of vital importance.  Poetry is different from prose in that poetry has to be very concise.  Every word matters.  I need to remember that.

As much as I feel like I know figurative language pretty well, they still managed to trip me up a few times.  The differences between simply using a term as a descriptor and using it as a metaphor.  What is a synecdoche?  I know how to use some of them in my writing and others I might use without knowing the technical name for them, but recognizing them in literature appears to be an entirely different story.

Focusing on the big picture is important.  I know myself.  I know that I like to get sidetracked by little things that catch my attention.  When I'm answering questions on the main idea, however, this can trip me up.  My brain remembers some little detail that suddenly seems really important and I get an urge that the small detail, not the main idea, is what the theme of the poem is.  This is actually also applicable to normal literature as well.  The main idea is often related in the text, but hidden.  It's not a small detail.

By context, I mainly mean relating things in the poem to other things.  At least twice, I was caught on not knowing what "manna dew" or "relish" was (from the first poem).  As such, I guessed on one and missed the point on the other.  Reading in context, and hopefully reading more in general, will help me work out this problem.  Context also refers to everything else earlier in the list as well.  Some things are different in different context.  Recognizing context will help in recognizing that particular aspect of poetry.

And I might as well address the runner-ups as well.  I usually do not have much trouble with meter, but that question in the first poem about the meter confused me.  Counting the syllables gave me 4-4-4-2, which doesn't fit with any of the answers.  Reviewing meter (and terms related to meter) will likely help in the future.  Furthermore, poetry forms are also a bit of trouble.  Sonnets are easily recognizable, but other forms can seem very similar and I should review those as well.

74%. Okay...

I got a 74% or 37/50.  I'll admit that I wasn't nearly as surprised as some other people seem to have been with their scores.  I'm a bit behind on the homework and my friends have talked about how much harder the test is than they expected, and that their scores were a surprise to them.  I cannot say that I'm overly disappointed or shocked.  I just sort of... am.  And from what I can tell, the score really isn't that bad.  But I digress.

There were a few minutes of frustration, however, as I looked through the correct answers, reasoning my way through what made them correct (and occasionally referring to the given explanations.  Far too often, I find myself thinking that I over-thought a situation.  At least twice, my original instinct was the right answer, but when I thought it through, it seemed to obvious or too shallow.  I suppose I am expecting more out of everything than necessarily exists.  I know this is a problem of mine, though, and I plan on addressing it accordingly.

Funnily enough, I am also rather amused by my results.  Going in, I had expectations about which passages I would be able to answer well and which ones I would make a mess of.  While some of them were correct (I know I am bad at analyzing writing similar to that of the last passage), I had not expected my answers for the first poem to go so well, nor my answers for the excerpt of Pride and Prejudice to go so poorly.  I have often believed that my understanding of authors' meanings in poetry is a little different from their original intentions, simply because there are different interpretations (which, I suppose, also means that everybody is correct, but I'm not quite sure what that means in terms of multiple choice questions with one right answer and four wrong answers).  However, for both poems, I did considerably better than I had expected.  On the other hand, I expected the excerpt from a book that I have always enjoyed reading to have gone much better than it did.  Having read the entire novel multiple times, I was confident that I was able to tell what Austen's intentions and messages were.  There, I think, rests my problems; I was over-confident and brought in information that was better implied in other parts of the novel, that reading the rest of the book would make visible in the first passage.  I think it is a good thing I did badly on this; I will definitely learn from the experience for potential future situations like this one.

And I think this is getting a bit longer than the original assignment meant for this post to be, so I should probably stop soon.  I guess, overall, I'm not disappointed.  Actually, part of me is pretty excited; there's a lot yet that I have to learn and I'm looking forward to learning it.