Critical Considerations

[gurthbruins]

And but me some buts, please

I stayed in a house frequently visited by some believer in pendulums and someone whose name I forget : he objected rather strongly to the use of the word "but". I think I was told in school not to start sentences with "and" or "but".

I think I don't like rules very much. Maybe that's why poetry first appealed to me, with its concept of "poetic license". My whole philosophy is in line with Somerset Maugham's "Do exactly as you please, with due regard to the policeman around the corner."

So I think maybe the use of "and" and "but" are needing a bit of support. I call on my favourites, Shelley and Shakespeare, for a bit of support here:

And, like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil...

-This is the start of one of my very favourite poems by Shelley!

'And yet not cloy thy lips with loath'd satiety,
But rather famish them amid their plenty,

- Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis

But when her lips were ready for his pay,
He winks, and turns his lips another way. - ibid.

'But, O, what banquet were thou to the taste,
Being nurse and feeder of the other four ! - ibid.

But all in vain, good queen, it will not be;
She hath assay'd as much as may be prov'd; - ibid.

- The last two quotes are actually the beginning of stanzas. Enough!

[smorzando]

I've been told that in pieces of formal writing, never start a sentence with 'and', and to try to avoid 'but' at the start of a sentence too, so use words like 'however', or 'on the other hand', or 'nonetheless' or words and phrases of that callibre. I generally don't start sentences off with 'and', unless maybe I'm talking out loud, but sometimes I do start a sentence with 'but', and I don't see what's wrong with it, as long as it isn't a formal piece of writing. Does that answer your question?

smorz.

[gurthbruins]

Yes, of course, dear smorz, anything you say I regard as a valid reply - and that applies equally to everybody, I am indeed a most egalitarian elitist - even if I can't see exactly what question I was posing.

But this is unnecessary quibbling on my part. Even if I posed no question, I was still implicitly requesting comment.

Oh, I remembered the name of that "guru" my pendulum-swinging buddy devoteed: Drunvalo. Not someone I personally cared to listen to.

[BenJohnson]

I think I was told in school not to start sentences with "and" or "but".

I can remember being told that, along with being told not to write poems that rhyme and other nonsense. Education while wonderful can be taught by some people with real sticks up their arses.

But, the plus side is that when you realise that you are free to do as you please and break all rules while writing the feeling is intensely liberating.

And your quotes make the point well.

[BenJohnson]

p.s. not this Drunvalo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunvalo_Melchizedek)?

[gurthbruins]

Yes, Ben+, it must be him.

[gurthbruins]

But, the plus side is that when you realise that you are free to do as you please and break all rules while writing the feeling is intensely liberating. - BenJohnson

Your saying this is igniting me to make the distinction between Poetry and Prose clearer to myself.

Once I have freed myself from all invalid restraints, I am free to call anything I write Poetry. I can discard all rules of rhyme and structure. So now I will follow Hemingway's example and say that all my prose is poetry.

Not realising this before, I have made the mistake of dividing my work into "Poetry" and "prose". I now see that any such division is basically false.

For me, this is a far-reaching breakthrough. I will now introduce my work in a new way. See my Introduction thread "I am in doubt..."

[DDG]

There's no rule that says one can't begin a sentence with either 'and' or 'but' - teachers merely discourage this in an effort to get their pupils to construct longer and more complex sentences. Children tend to have a tendency to start almost every sentence with one of those words.

But it doesn't always work.

And so on.

;)