TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

I know some people find the character limits on social media posts, well, limiting … but I think that’s where poets shine. We know a thing or two about economy of language.

Poets are known for making big moves in small spaces. We value brevity and compression, which go hand in hand. In a brief poem, maybe a poem with only a handful of lines, each word weighs a ton. We have to choose them carefully. An enormous amount of meaning — and possibility — is packed inside every word. I picture them as expandable suitcases, unzipped so that we can stuff even more inside them. That’s compression! The words themselves may be few, but they carry a great deal. 

Word and character limits are productive constraints. It’s a challenge to use only a few words to describe a scene or communicate an idea. I think it’s more challenging to do the same work in twenty words rather than in two hundred. In this sense, limits can make us more creative. We have to work a little harder to do the job with less. Less is more.

When I revise, my work tends to shrink rather than grow; I’m always looking for words or lines that can be cut because they aren’t essential. I whittle my work down as I revise it, trying to do the most with the least. Cut and compress, cut and compress. I joke that if I’m not careful, I could revise a poem to nothing, until — POOF! — it disappears. 

Today’s poem is about being limited in the language we can use, and having to spend those words wisely.

The Quiet World
by Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred   
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear   
without saying hello. In the restaurant   
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,   
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.   
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,   
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line   
and listen to each other breathe.

"The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel from THE FORGIVENESS PARADE © 1998 Jeffrey McDaniel. Used by permission of Manic D Press.