{"id":6685,"date":"2014-11-26T22:26:01","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T22:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peakepro.com\/?p=6685"},"modified":"2015-01-28T21:11:13","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T21:11:13","slug":"no-thing-bad-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/6685-no-thing-bad-words.html","title":{"rendered":"No Such Thing as Bad Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;The dose makes the poison.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div style=\"float; right;\">-Paracelsus<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In response to my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/6676-top-poetry-words.html\">recent analysis of the frequency of words used in past issues of <em>Poetry<\/em> magazine<\/a>, current editor Don Share issued me a good-humoured challenge:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en-gb\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PeakePoetics\">@PeakePoetics<\/a> Um, not anymore, I&#39;ll wager. Try it with issues published since I became editor.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Don Share (@Don_Share) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Don_Share\/status\/537694501146750977\">November 26, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>So, I analysed 395 poems from 13 issues of <em>Poetry<\/em> edited by Don Share from October 2013 to November 2014. <\/p>\n<p>I was at first surprised to discover that the nature of the results are not substantially different than those of the nearly 3,000 past issues.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe average poem is 92 words in length (again, once <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stop_words\" target=\"_blank\">stop words<\/a> have been excluded), containing 14% of words in the top-100 and 24% of words that were only used once across the 395 poems analysed.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the top 25 words:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>time\t(137)<\/li>\n<li>light\t(104)<\/li>\n<li>night\t(94)<\/li>\n<li>long\t(93)<\/li>\n<li>love\t(93)<\/li>\n<li>man\t(92)<\/li>\n<li>eyes\t(92)<\/li>\n<li>white\t(89)<\/li>\n<li>world\t(87)<\/li>\n<li>face\t(83)<\/li>\n<li>air\t(82)<\/li>\n<li>left\t(81)<\/li>\n<li>black\t(79)<\/li>\n<li>water\t(78)<\/li>\n<li>head\t(76)<\/li>\n<li>life\t(75)<\/li>\n<li>day\t(71)<\/li>\n<li>hand\t(69)<\/li>\n<li>people\t(69)<\/li>\n<li>wind\t(68)<\/li>\n<li>inside\t(65)<\/li>\n<li>sea\t(64)<\/li>\n<li>red\t(62)<\/li>\n<li>things\t(61)<\/li>\n<li>lost\t(60)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I found this surprising because Don is, by reputation and in my experience, one of the most interesting and innovative editors around. He&#8217;s undeniably on the pulse of contemporary poetry. So why do these words seem like they come from the poems of a century ago?<\/p>\n<p>I think the answer is pretty simple: there no bad words in poetry, only the overuse of &#8220;poetry words&#8221; in any single poem. No single poem analysed used even a fraction of the top twenty five, and I know that on average the majority of words (80-90%) in most poems were not from these top words. Furthermore, a substantial percentage of words showed up only once across all poems, which demonstrates a high degree of linguistic innovation.<\/p>\n<p>Cumulatively, though, these words do keep showing up in poetry (and in <em>Poetry<\/em>). What is equally interesting to me is the idea that a certain number&#8211;in fact, just the right number&#8211;of these words may be sometimes necessary to make a poem what it is. These words are like salt&#8211;a little bit seasons things, but too much can ruin the dish.<\/p>\n<p>Frequently-used words are used frequently for a reason. These words are terse, expressive, and acquired early in life. They hold a power that, if overused, derails our trust in the author, and defuses our interest in the poem. <\/p>\n<p>Yet they also seem to be some of the great workhorses of our language. So, to me the moral here is: don&#8217;t be afraid to use them; but don&#8217;t wear these poor creatures out.<\/p>\n<p>Good poems make use of the range of our language the way good painters make use of the range of their palette. To scoff at a composer choosing C-major or a painter choosing pure red is to miss the essentials of technique, context, and intention. <\/p>\n<p>For this reason, to me, there are no bad words, only words used badly.<\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/6699-unconscious-preoccupations-machine-revelations.html\">Click here to read an analysis of my own poetry using the same methodology<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The dose makes the poison.&#8221; -Paracelsus In response to my recent analysis of the frequency of words used in past issues of Poetry magazine, current editor Don Share issued me a good-humoured challenge: @PeakePoetics Um, not anymore, I&#39;ll wager. Try it with issues published since I became editor. &mdash; Don Share (@Don_Share) November 26, 2014 &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/6685-no-thing-bad-words.html\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No Such Thing as Bad Words<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1268,5],"tags":[999,1002],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}