Fortunately, I am a not a bad student and I quickly picked up what I should I have known even during the undergraduate education. By the time graduate school came to a close, soon after Harry Richardson told me one day, "Sriram, I think it is about time you graduated," I knew, even without waiting for feedback from others, that my writing abilities had improved.
Now, as a faculty, and an old-fashioned one at that, I practically harass students in my classes about their writing. Grammar issues I alert them about. I help them understand that muddled sentences reflect muddled thinking too. I instruct them to avoid metaphors and flowery writing and to get to the point. "Avoid metaphors as if they are the plague" I say, pun intended, of course.
It is not that I do not enjoy reading wonderful wordplay. I do. There is a place for that, too, in my life. Especially when I read the New Yorker. Like the following sentence in an essay on the Greek yogurt phenomenon (sub. reqd.) in the US market:
The air was warm and moist and pungent with the scent of soured milk, like the cleavage of a nursing mother on a warm day.What an awesome description!
My mind raced to the years in the old country, with plenty of children all around when the extended family got together at weddings and during the annual summer holidays. The infants who were being nursed could--and would--throw up curdled milk at the most inappropriate moments (not that there is ever an appropriate moment for that!) and what an unpleasant smell that was, making one wonder how such sweet and innocent creatures could ever create awful stinks like that!
To be able to stir such imaginations is the power that well-crafted sentences, essays, and stories have. I didn't have to be at the yogurt plant, in the separator room, to imagine what it smelt like. In my mind, I traveled to that town of New Berlin in New York, a place I hadn't even known of until reading the essay, walked into the factory, viewed the pipes and machines, and even got a whiff of the "the cleavage of a nursing mother on a warm day."
I am reminded of a Sanskrit couplet we read in high school, about the mind being the fastest vehicle ever--it can take us to wherever we want to go, and it does not take even a second to go places.
I will now brew a fresh pot of coffee, the aroma from which will cleanse this room of the "scent of soured milk." ;)
2 comments:
Amen to the pot of coffee bit - you really brew some wonderful coffee.
But ..........
Get to the point, will ya, is all well in the dull dreary world of business or engineering. But surely, in the liberal arts, flowery language should be encouraged. I wouldn't have chosen the metaphor example you have all too vividly portrayed in the post (!!!), but clearly the arts would be a boring place but for the magic of words.
Loosen up Khé and go all poetic. Maybe a walk around the Willamette, even though it must be cold and rainy outside, might help. And back for another cup of coffee !
Indeed, it has become cold and wet outside. A few nights ago, the overnight low plunged down to 31 (yes, in F not C) and then thankfully climbed up to 40 ;)
The trees have shed their leaves in a hurry and all the colors are gone and they are in the nude. Well, the evergreens are evergreens.
Hot coffee, therefore, feels a lot more attractive, and to cleanse the smell of "soured milk" is merely an excuse ;)
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