How Does the Poet Turn the Words into Poetry?

       No matter how different the form and objective, all poetry contains three elements: rhythm, sound effects, and metaphor.  We might say about a prose work, "This writer's style is very poetic," i.e. it makes good use of subtleties of rhythm, or it relies on extensive use of metaphor for effect.  Let's talk about rhythm first, using as an example the Robert Frost poem that was reproduced in the post "What IS This Thing Called Poetry?"  I'll reprint it here (I've also marked the rhyme scheme; we'll get back to that later).
 

Whose woods these are I think I know, [a]

His house is in the village, though; [a]
He will not see me stopping here [b]
To watch his woods fill up with snow. [a]

 My little horse must think it queer [b]

To stop without a farmhouse near [b]
Between the woods and frozen lake [c]
The darkest evening of the year. [b]

He gives his harness bells a shake [c]

To ask if there is some mistake. [c]
The only other sound's the sweep [d]
Of easy wind and downy flake. [c]

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, [d]
But I have promises to keep, [d]
And miles to go before I sleep, [d]
And miles to go before I sleep. [d]

       Poetic rhythm (meter) is quantified according to certain conventions.  It's usually measured in "feet," i.e. syllabic units with a particular stress pattern.  The Frost poem is classic iambic tetrameter, i.e. four feet to the line, with each foot containing two syllables, stressed "ta-DAH." Thus the first and last lines are quite regular and exemplify this scheme well:
whose WOODS | these ARE | i THINK | i KNOW. 
to WATCH | his WOODS | fill UP | with SNOW|. 

       A skilled poet will vary the feet within the selected framework in order to avoid monotony.  Thus, the second line  would never be read like this in normal speech:  
his HOUSE | is IN | the VILL | age THOUGH. 
It reads in a natural voice:
his HOUSE | is in | the VILLage | THOUGH. 
(If you interested in technical terms, "is in" is a Pyrrhic foot -- two unstressed syllables; "the VILLage" is an amphibrach (unstressed-stressed-unstressed); and "THOUGH" is a half of a spondee (stressed-stressed).  [I think a foot with a single stressed syllable has some other name, but I can't recall it or find it at the moment.]
       The third line reads (at least in my ear; this is not a cut-and-dried process) as:
he WILL not | SEE me | STOPping| HERE. You get an amphibrach, a trochee, another trochee, and half a spondee, all within the framework of tetrameter (four feet to the line).

       You might say (and I'm sure many students say it every day), why bother with this kind of boring analysis? My answer is that it can provide an awareness of how a poet achieves natural, conversational rhythms without losing the basic metrical pattern that he selected.

       You'll notice Frost uses a number of two-syllable words in the lines (village, stopping, farmhouse, evening, harness).  They tend to tie the lines together and ease up the "thum-PAH" of the designated meter.
       But then you get these two lines:
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
       The regularity of the rhythm here reinforces the sense of lulling quiet and smoothness of the process of wind and snow.  What if he had written the following (removing the contraction from "sound's")?
The only other sound is the sweep
of easy wind and downy flake.
       The first line there limps horribly; it almost hippity-hops, because you have to speed up to say "sound is the" in order to insert the extra syllable.  You've lost your handle on the meter and converted it into prose. This is where a lot of beginning poets falter; they have a tin ear for the rhythm. 
       Furthermore these two lines are run-on grammatically; all the other lines have a natural break at the end.  This also adds to the sense of hypnoptic smoothness.

       And then the final stanza: 
The WOODS | are LOVEly, || DARK and | DEEP. 
       You get iamb, amphibrach, trochee, spondee.  This line contains a cesura -- a slight pause after "lovely."  The isolation of the two heavy syllables near the end of the line reinforces the significance of the words.
But I | have PROMises | to KEEP. 
       "Promises" is the only three-syllable word contained in the poem and it's located centrally in the line, which is pretty much reduced to three feet.  This puts the emphasis on the word "promises."
       And then the final pair of lines, where the rhythm returns to very regular iambic tetrameter:
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
       That repetition is one of the most important elements of the poem.  The regularity of the meter combine with the repetition to increase the sense of that hypnotic weariness, that sameness -- putting one foot in front of the other in what seems an endless forward trudge.

       Now of course the effect of a poem is not achieved entirely by meter.  Let's consider the elements of sound -- rhyme, assonance (repetition of vowel sounds), consonance (repetition of consonant sounds), and alliteration (repetition of initial consonant sounds).
       Rhyme patterns are usually described in terms of alphabetic letters.  Thus a basic four-line ballad stanza rhymes a-b-c-b, as in a stanza of a poem ("The Dowie Houms o' Yarrow"), which I used as an epigraph in "The Termite Queen," v.2:
Four he hurt, an’ five he slew, [a]
On the dowie houms o’ Yarrow, [b]
Till that stubborn knight came him behind, [c]
An’ ran his body thorrow. [b]
       In the Frost poem the rhyme scheme is more subtle; the rhyming words are very simple, but they are used in an interwoven pattern.  I marked the scheme in the poem printed above.  The end word of the third line of each stanza forms the basic rhyme of the next stanza, until one gets to the final quatrain, where all four lines pick up the third line from the third stanza.  This additional repetition acts as yet another reinforcement of the poet's weariness with the inescapable forward progression of life.
       Actually, assonance, consonance, and alliteration don't play that large a role here.  The phrase "watch the woods" is alliterative, but otherwise the only noticeable use of consonance is again in the lines:
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
       Also noticeable here is the assonance of sweep and easy, and sound and downy, again suggesting the smoothness and silence of the wind and snow.

       Finally we need to talk about the most important element of all: metaphor.  What is metaphor?  Technically, it's a figure of speech in which one item is totally identified with another, and it's usually contrasted with simile, which is mere comparison.  An example of a metaphor is Keats' wonderful line in "Ode on Melancholy," where a person is spoken of as one who "can burst joy's grape against his palate fine."  Joy IS a grape; if he had written, "Joy is like a grape that one can burst against his palate," that would have been a simile.  If something actually partakes of the identity of something else, that constitutes a much stronger statement.
       However, the term "metaphor" can also be applied more broadly, as any substitution of one thing for another, any symbolic representation.  I plan to use it that way in my discussions of poetry. 
       All poetry deals in metaphor in this broad definition.  If it doesn't, it can't be called true poetry.  Between the prosaic words of the metaphor and the reader's perception of the metaphor is the gap where the poetry lies.

       In the Frost poem, I have wondered at times about the initial remark concerning the owner of the woods.  Is this simply a nod to reality?  I've decided that the implication (metaphorical) is that, as part of the natural world, the woods belong to God, whose house in "in the village," i.e. the village church.  Maybe this is a standard interpretation; I haven't read any criticism of the poem, but however that is, I personally just thought of it.     
       I believe the "little horse" IS a way to connect the scene to reality, although "the darkest evening of the year" could imply that the poet is at the winter solstice of his life, in a dark and depressed state.
      Actually the entire poem is a metaphor, symbolizing the longing for death to take us beyond the distresses of daily life.  The poet never says, "Death is like a dark wood that makes us want to enter it, experience and yield to its darkness, and escape our responsibilities."  Obviously, that would be much weaker, more sententious, and even cliched.  Death is also seen as sleep -- nothing new there, but we have the implication of death from the cold; you lie down in the snow and you go to sleep peacefully and never wake up.  Death becomes a painless process of escape.  By couching that concept totally in a deceptively simple, narratively structured metaphor, Frost has written a strong and moving poem that becomes unforgettable.

       If anyone would like to add anything to my interpretation, I'd love to entertain remarks.

 

What IS This Thing Called Poetry, Anyway?

 

       Max Cairnduff, on his literary website Pechorin's Journal (which I strongly recommend, by the way), recently posted a review of the novel "Leaving the Atocha Station" by Ben Lerner.  The book deals with the nature of poetry and this has induced me to make some remarks of my own on that topic. It's about to turn into a double post.  Today I'm going to discuss the qualities that make poetry effective.  In the next post I'll analyze some examples that show how that effectiveness is achieved.

       Sometimes in my rambles through other blogs I come upon a person who writes verse and posts it.  Occasionally some of it is passably good, but unfortunately most of it is awful.  I won't give specific examples because I really don't want to hurt people's feelings.  I understand that these people are immensely proud of what they've done -- they've written poetry -- isn't that wonderful?  But they can't see that what they've written isn't really poetry: first, they are too close to it; second, they are totally unfamiliar with any of the basics of poetic composition; and third, they have no sense of rhythm or metaphorical construction. 
       Their "poetry" is about as good as my figure drawing -- that is, embarrassingly bad.  I 've said before that my friend who is a trained artist informed me of that fact, and after she pointed out things that were wrong, like the proportion of the human body, I agreed with her.  But my point is, I couldn't really see it at first; I was proud of what I'd done because it was something I'd never tried before, but I was too close to it and I didn't have any technique.  I'm sure these blog versifiers can't see their flaws, either.  I'm not condemning them for that, but I do have to say, some of the stuff just makes me squirm.

     To make poetry, it takes more than simply adding some rhyme and limping meter to a sequence of words. So what does turn versification into poetry?  I'm going to quote a paragraph from Max Cairnduff's review.  The character in the novel, Adam, is living in Spain but he doesn't speak Spanish well at all.  Therefore: "For much of the book then the bulk of Adam’s conversations are notional. Things are said to him, but whether what he understands is what was meant is far from clear. That sounds potentially annoying but instead it’s very funny, and something more than that – it’s a metaphor for poetry itself. Adam understands Spanish as a reader understands a poem. Sensed meanings, which may or may not be intended. Multiplicities of interpretations, those chosen coming as much from what Adam brings to the conversation as to what was actually said. Adam’s conversations exist in the space between him and the words he understands, like poetry exists in the gap between the reader and the words on the page."  [My boldface in both cases] 

       With writers of doggerel, there is no such gap.  The sentiments expressed might just as well be rendered directly in prose, and probably better done so, because there wouldn't be all those distracting misapplications of rhythm and rhyme.

       I wrote that kind of poetry when I was in high school.  Some of it wasn't too bad -- I had a little poems included in a college anthology as the prefatory piece and one of my profs said it reminded him of Emily Dickinson.  However, my balloon was quickly popped when as an English major in my sophomore year I took the requisite Introduction to Poetry course.  I discovered what good poetry really is and I immediately said, "I can't do anything like this," and I quit writing the form.  I haven't written anything since except a few poems for one of the later Ki'shto'ba volumes, which were absolutely essential to the story.  Whether they are considered any good, only time will tell.  I can always use the excuse that they were actually written by a giant termite in an alien language and translated by Prf. Kaitrin Oliva in the 30th century, so I'm merely channeling them from the future! (LOL)

       What poetry does is to take words and put them together in special ways that suggest far more than the sense of the words themselves.   How this is accomplished I'll discuss in that later post, where I'll give examples.  Poetry is not easy and can't be understood with one superficial skimming -- to be appreciated properly, a poem requires strenuous attention.  In illustration I want to conclude with another experience of my own. 

       At one point during my college days, the Head Librarian Dr. Ellsworth Mason, who was a Joyce scholar and also taught in the English Department from time to time, asked a few students over to his house to talk about poetry.  One of the poems was the very simple and familiar "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.  I'll print it here:

 

Whose woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

 

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

 

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

 

       We all read the poem and Dr. Mason asked us to interpret it and we sat there and read it over and pondered, and the silence grew and everybody got embarrassed, or at least I did.  It's just a few words describing a momentary event in the day of a particular man, right?  And yet there is a shift of tone in that last stanza.  I'm happy to note that I'm the one who finally had the breakthrough.  I said something like this: the poem is about the allure of death, but the poet's sense of duty and responsibility wins the battle.  He rejects the escape that death would provide and recognizes that he must carry on to the natural end of the road before he can rest.  And Dr. Mason said that was exactly right.  I was so pleased! 
       That changed my view of poetry forever.  I never looked at a true poem as something superficial again.  The poetry of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" exists in that "gap between the reader and the words on the page."

 

Of Poetry and Epigraphs, Part 2

       I'm finally getting around to completing the epigraph analysis that I began in a previous post.  Before I begin, let me say that I've now been able to insert the missing Robert Graves in Volume One, so anybody who reads it in any format from here on in will have the epigraphs the way they are supposed to be.  And all formats are now available -- see the sidebar for information.  Note particularly the two-volume bargain you can get at Barnes & Noble if you want the print edition.

       Part One of this post covered mostly the initial section of "The Speaking of the Dead."  In Part Two, the tone continues to shift and becomes more ominous. We are no longer dealing with mundane life on Earth, we are dealing with things that happen in mysterious outer space.  So we get a new metaphor: the sea. As Griffen himself says at one point: “The sea – interstellar space … When have they not both been dangerous?” So the first chapter begins with "The Boatman is out crossing the wild sea at night" from Tagore's "Fruit-Gathering." I might note that as Part Two begins, Kaitrin and Griffen are still in the courting stage and she asks him to read poetry to her.  Several poems are included in the text and these not only contribute to the courtship, they also bear a relationship to later events and to character development.  The sea metaphor is reinforced in the first chapter when Prf. A'a'ma bursts out with Wordsworth's sonnet "Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?"

       The sea metaphor persists as the relationship of Kaitrin and Griffen continues to adjust itself, again with a certain ominous implication, first in lines from Tagore's "On the Seashore":

They build their houses with sand, and

they play with empty shells.  With withered

leaves they weave their boats and

smilingly float them on the vast deep.

Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

This suggests a fragility and an innocent obliviousness in the relationship the couple is building and reinforces the "space equals sea" metaphor.  As they weave their plans, they float them on the "vast deep" of the future.  Additionally, the denizens of this space ship are on the verge of a shore -- the sandy beach that is an unknown alien world. So this quotation perfectly fits the status of the plot at that point.

       The sea metaphor picks up again with an even more ominous twist in the quotation from Dylan Thomas (in Thomas the sea often symbolizes death, eternity, the afterlife, the vastness of time ... ): 

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

       Finally we get the last two lines from Tagore's "On the Seashore: "The sea plays with children, / And pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach."  Here we again see th sea-beach that is the alien planet, but its welcome has become a gleaming of pale teeth within its smile.  Just what does this alien landfall have in store?

       This chapter (Chapter 11) was originally the final chapter of Part Two, but I moved three chapters from Part Three back to Part Two in order to bring in more of the termites, give a better cliffhanger, and to shorten the second volume slightly.  Hence, in Chapter 14 a new metaphor is introduced, one which will be pervasive throughout Volume Two: the dark bird.  Reflecting Kwi'ga'ga'tei's final prophecy, we get a collection of portents from Shakespeare's MacBeth, ending with "The obscure bird / clamored the livelong night." 

       Dark birds and night birds -- ravens, crows, owls, etc. -- can symbolize death, otherworldliness,  mysteries and magic (but also wisdom and intelligence).   We will see the dark bird again in two of the three quotations from Dylan Thomas' "Especially When the October Wind ... " that are used on the chapters of Volume Two where Kaitrin and Kwi'ga'ga'tei are learning to communicate.  (That poem is one of my favorites of all times!  It's about how the poet produces his own word-art and also about his sense of his own mortality.)

       The first quotation ends with the line "By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled bird" (the final line of the poem).  What a wonderful, densely packed, meaty image that is!  We get the sea -- always suggestive of eternity, and in our case of the void of space -- blending into the dark bird (other lines read: "By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds, / Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks ... ").  Here it is the speech of the bird that is dark; the poet hears the bird of death calling in his own poetry.  The poem is basically pentameter (five feet to the line, with a lot of metrical variation), but  the rhythm of this line shifts suddenly; it's loaded with heavy syllables (I would scan it as tetrameter, as follows):  "By the SEA'S | SIDE HEAR | the DARK | VOWELLED BIRD -- we have anapest, spondee, iamb, spondee.  I'm sure some of you poetry scholars out there might argue with my scansion, but the point is that the heaviness and the stretch of the syllables emphasizes the darkness and the ominous weightiness of what is happening.

      

       I will stop here because I don't want to reveal anything about Volume Two that you shouldn't know at this point.  Suffice it to say that the dark bird metaphor persists throughout the rest of the book, although the ominous suggestiveness of the epigraphs changes to a more intimate and personal tone in Part Four.  Later on, after people have had a chance to read the whole of "The Termite Queen," I may return to this topic and discuss more of the epigraphs in the second volume.  I hope this little essay will encourage people to examine the application of the epigraphs and perhaps even stimulate some interest in poetry in people who have had no such interest previously.  Poetry is truly an amazing art form.

      

Of Poetry and Epigraphs, Part 1

       As I've been formatting the text of "The Termite Queen: Volume Two: The Wound That Has No Healing," I've been thinking about the epigraphs and wondering whether the people who have read Volume One have been paying them the attention they deserve. I did a post called "The Use of Epigraphs in Literature" way back on 11/20/2011 but I want to elaborate a bit more as to how the reader ought to approach those little chapter adornments. Their symbolic value becomes increasingly important as we move into Volume Two.

       "The Termite Queen" is really all one novel (just too long, unfortunately, to publish in one volume).  Therefore, it was constructed to have four sections:

Part One: Earth: Inception

Part Two: Space: Consummation

Part Three: 2 Giotta 17A: Dissolution

Part Four: Earth: Absolution

As you can see, the effect is circular -- we begin and end on Earth, bookending a voyage  into space and a period of adventure on an alien planet. 

      I should begin by mentioning the overall epigraph for Volume One.  Did you even notice it was there?  It consists of the opening lines of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan":

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ...

       Could there be a better description of the termite fortress and its environs?  I must confess that I actually modeled the arrangement of the fortress on the description in this poem!  There is a hint of irony here: one does not usually associate termites with a dreamy romantic "pleasure dome," but such a perspective enlarges the scope.  And then the second volume begins with the four concluding lines of "Kubla Khan" (if I had published the book all in one volume, I would have added those lines to the above): "Weave a circle round him thrice / And close your eyes with holy dread / For he on honeydew hath fed / And drunk the milk of paradise."  And that I will not comment on at this point.
       Part One is just what it says:  Inception.  Everything begins here; the premises are set up, the motivations delineated (or intimated), the characters introduced.  Therefore, the epigraphs aren't quite as complexly symbolic as in later sections. 

       We have those pertaining to the dying termite Ti'shra, taken in mock heroic fashion from Milton's "Samson Agonistes."  This is carried over into Part Two, when we glimpse the conclusion of Ti'shra's story, so a total of four chapters use epigraphs from "Samson." 

       Six chapters in Part One and two in Part Two utilize quotations from William Congreve's comedy of manners "The Way of the World," which eerily mirrors the progression of the romance between Kaitrin Oliva and Griffen Gwidian.  But then the nature of the relationship changes; it's no longer a comedy as much as a mystery.  What really is going on here?  We know what Kaitrin is thinking because she is the POV character throughout all of Volume One, but we begin to realize that we have no idea what is going on in Griffen's head.  The tone begins to shift in the concluding chapter of Part One, where the epigraph is Thomas Randolph's "A Devout Lover."  We remain in the same period as Congreve (early 17th century) but here we envision sexual love as having a mysterious spiritual significance.  Perhaps this prefigures something to come.  Who can say at that point?

       As for the rest of the chapters of Part One, Tennyson's "The Eagle" serves nicely to introduce Prf. A'a'ma, the avian extraterrestrial, who "clasps the crag with crooked hands ... in lonely lands ... " (in this case the perching bar on a terrestrial train, a whimsical application).  "Hamlet" furnishes a reference to the speaking of ghosts, as it will again in the second volume.   When we glimpse the culture of the Te Quornaz (the lemur people), who have something of a classical-style culture, with "Roman" villas, vinyards, local overlords, we see them dancing and cavorting in the guise of Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn": "What men or gods are these?  What maidens loth? / What mad pursuit?  What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels?  What wild ecstasy?" 

       The two chapters where Kaitrin is solving the puzzle of the termite language draw on Biblical references that seem to me to need little explanation: "In the beginning was the Word" (Kaitrin couldn't solve the puzzle without the creative impulse of "real" words) and then when she presents her ultimate solution: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" (at that point Ti'shra becomes real -- is brought to life through the medium of language).  Similarly, the quotation from Robert Graves' "The Song of Blodeuwedd" (unfortunately omitted by necessity in the ebooks purchased by some of you) reflects not only Kaitrin's and Gwidian's discussion of the Mabinogion myths in that chapter -- it also shows the human Gwidian's growing effect on Kaitrin: "I was spellbound by Gwydion ...  " (he is bringing her to sensual life).

       When we first meet the members of the expedition, who are from all the intelligent species that make up the Confederation of Four Planets, we get "Alice in Wonderland":  the dance of whitings, snails, and porpoises, lobsters and turtles, reflecting the diversity of the lifeforms present in the room.  And finally, in the chapter where we get a glimpse of an actual termite queen, endlessly producing life in the darkness, we get another Robert Graves quotation (again, missing in the ebooks to this point), this time from his wonderful work "The Greek Myths," depicting the Orphic view of the creation of the universe -- "a goddess ... was courted by the Wind ... and laid a silver egg in the womb of darkness."  This links the actual termite queen to  the ominous thing we have only glimpsed to that point: the Shshi's Great Creatrix, The Highest-Mother-Who-Has-No-Name.  What is a termite queen, anyway?  A symbol of the endlessly creative female principle!   What else could it be?
       I'll suspend this discussion at this point and continue with another post on this topic over the next couple of days.

Added later: If you enjoy this post, see Poetry and Epigraphs, Part 2.

The Use of Epigraphs in Literature

For those of you who find this post interesting, check out the subsequent posts: Of Poetry and Epigraphs, Part 1 and Of Poetry and Epigraphs, Part 2.    

Any of you who read "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" will notice that I included an epigraph at the beginning of the book -- a portion of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Lines: When the Lamp is Shattered."

     First I should say that I'm a lover of poetry; in my younger days I found good poetry too difficult to be enjoyable as everyday reading, but in later years, I've taken to reading and studying it more deeply and now I'm really appreciative of poetic expression.  When I wrote "Monster," I considered what poem might enhance the meaning of the book and this particular poem of Shelley's came to mind.  I don't think it's one of his best; its imagery is too chaotic and full of mixed metaphors.  However, that very chaos and confused rhetoric fits what happens in my novella, where everything is falling apart like a bird's nest in a windstorm.  The meaning of the word "love" is discussed in the book and at the end Kaitrin Oliva is certainly left "naked to laughter" -- exposed and vulnerable.  So I thought that this poem would serve to reinforce the meaning of the book, if you'll take the trouble to go back and think about it.

     In fact, that's the problem I always have with chapter epigraphs.  It's been awhile since I read Frank Herbert's "Dune," but I remember he uses epigraphs.  After every chapter I would go back and study the epigraph in relation to the chapter and I could never see any connection between the two! 

     I've said earlier that I use epigraphs in "The Termite Queen" and I sincerely hope that readers will be able to discern their relationship with the text!  I could publish the story without the epigraphs -- it would certainly be simpler for me because of the permissions thing -- but I think the quotations endow the book with a significantly deeper layer of meaning.   

     Here's an example:  The first very brief chapter is told in the thoughts of the Shi Ti'shra, the Worker who has been abducted by aliens and turned into a lab specimen.  Of course it has no eyes, but it has plenty of other senses, and it's lying there in a glass cubicle, in a state of total sensory deprivation, with nobody to talk to or touch, dying of xenotoxic infection syndrome and starvation -- completely harmless and at the mercy of its captors.  And what epigraph do I use?  "... eyeless in Gaza ... among inhuman foes ... " (Milton's "Samson Agonistes").  This adds an ironic touch of the mock heroic and alters the perspective; to Ti'shra, it's the humans who are inhuman and its fellow Shshi who are "human."  I also use a quotation from "Samson" on the chapter where Ti'shra dies (" … Death who sets all free / Hath paid his ransom now and full discharge.")  And later when the team finds that the Shshi have built a cairn of stones in memory of their lost fellow, I use "There will I build him a monument," etc., preserving that gentle mock heroic tone right to end of Ti'Shra's role.

     The early portion of the love affair between Kaitrin and Griffen reminded me of a comedy of manners as I was writing it, so I use quotations from Congreve's "Way of the World," which is the only 18th century play I like (not my favorite literary period).  Mirabell and Mrs. Millamont seemed to perfectly reflect my hero and heroine. The use of that comparison also suggests a timelessness -- the same sort of male-female relationship that could happen in 1700 could also happen in the 30th century.

     In the second section of the book, which is laid on the spaceship taking the team from Earth to the exoplanet, I introduce sea imagery, maybe a not-so-original metaphor for space and its dangers but effective just the same.  They "set sail" with the 10th-century poem "The Seafarer" and end with Rabindranath Tagore's "On the seashore" -- "The sea plays with children / and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach" --  slightly sinister imagery that conveys a hint of foreboding, especially since the sea beach they are approaching is the planet 2 Giotta 17A where the giant termites live.  What indeed will that place bring to them in the end?  

     So my hope is that whenever I do get this published, the reader will pay attention to the epigraphs and recognize the depth they impart to the story.