Fill the world with song Sing until you're silly Wild and beguiled By Roses and Lilys Stars on Alabama The way you look tonight Baby I'm amazed When you hold me tight Nobody to see us Nobody to hear us Pay no mind to stupid words With nobody near us Those ordinary things That I gotta do I throw em out the window To be alone with you By Richard W. Bray
Ira Gershwin
Style guides and writing teachers say we should avoid clichés like the plague. They’re bad, hackneyed, and trite. They say clichés are crutches, used by writers who are too lazy and stupid to think up new ways to say things.
But the experts wrong. Clichés have all sorts of wonderful uses.
Many clichés are metaphors. According to George Orwell, an effective metaphor “assists thought by evoking a visual image.”
The anti-cliché crowd argues that no matter how strong or evocative a clichéd metaphor might be, its power dwindles with repeated use. But that ain’t necessarily so.
If you say, “Mary is burning the candle at both ends,” a vivid picture comes to my mind which highlights the possible pitfalls of Mary’s behavior. This is an example of an outstanding metaphor that doesn’t diminish in fortitude no matter how many times you hear it.
The phrase “you’re just putting a band-aid on that problem” is another clichéd metaphor which remains evocative and effective despite repeated use.
These two clichéd metaphors are still effective because, even if we no longer light our houses with candles, candles and bandages are still part of our shared consciousness.
But metaphorical clichés will lose vigor as words go out of fashion. For example, the expression “hoisted by his own petard” packed a much greater rhetorical punch in an age when people commonly referred to bombs as petards.
Sometimes linguists employ the term “dead metaphor” to describe phrases like “hoisted by his own petard.” They reason that metaphors only remain “alive” as long as we can picture them in our mind’s eye.
But what if I tell you that Larry, who’s a very casual sports fan, just jumped on the Dodgers’ bandwagon? Even if you don’t know that there was a time when politicians actually hired wagons full of musicians to attract voters, it’s still easy to see what this expression means. So, is the bandwagon metaphor, alive, dead or somewhere in between?
Not all clichés are created equal. And the better ones deserve respect.
Of course, many clichéd metaphors are duds. And a bad cliché is about as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
I tell students that the best way to judge the potency of a metaphor is to visualize it. For example, try to visualize yourself “throwing some shade on someone.”
The cliché “throwing shade on someone” means to deprecate a person. It’s a lousy metaphor and it sets my blood to boiling every time I hear it.
On the other hand, when Victor says, “Yo, man. I’d loved to hang out with you guys all day, but I gotta bounce,” he’s employing a marvelously robust metaphor. It tells me that Victor is so active he’s downright kinetic.
As Ira Gershwin explains in his book Lyrics on Several Occasions, “The literary cliché is an integral part of lyric-writing.”
Sometimes lyricists cleverly rework a familiar cliché into a song. Like when Smokey Robinson says “I’m a choosy beggar, and you’re my choice.” Or when the Temptations sing “Papa was a rolling stone/Wherever he laid his hat was his home.” Or when Paul McCartney asks: “Would you walk away from a fool and his money?” Or when the Who’s Rodger Daltry laments, “I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.” Or when Ian Hunter complains that love has left him feeling “Once Bitten, Twice shy.”
Gershwin notes that clichés are an essential part of the songwriter’s toolkit because:
The phrase that is trite and worn-out when appearing in print usually becomes, when heard fitted to the appropriate musical turn, revitalized, and seems somehow to revert to its original provocativeness.
Here are some examples of songwriters putting clichés to good use:
Irving Berlin—I’m Putting all my Eggs in One Basket
Phil Collins—Against All Odd
Gene Autry—Back in the Saddle
Ira Gershwin—Bidin’ my Time
Arthur Hamilton—Cry Me a River
Waldo Holmes—Don’t Rock the Boat
Cole Porter— I Get a Kick Out of You
Sammy Cahn—High Hopes
Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong—Heard it Through the Grapevine
Neil Diamond—Love On the Rocks— (Nice pun, Neil)
Robbie Robertson—The Weight (Take a Load off, Annie)
Stevie Wonder—Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours
Al Hoffman and Dick Manning—It Takes Two to Tango
Larry Blackmon and Tomi Jenkins–Word Up
Aaron Schroeder and Wally Gold–It’s Now or Never (Music by Eduardo di Capua)
by Richard W. Bray
As Dorothy Parker once said
To her boyfriend, “Fare thee well”
—Cole Porter Just One of Those Things
Years ago I was up late reading a poetry anthology when I came across a familiar passage from Wordsworth:
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!
I put the book down and thought, “You poor, poor man.” I was briefly flooded with empathy for Lucy and her chronicler. And this sensation connected my life and my various heartaches and disappointments with the turbid ebb and flow of human misery. (Soon I remembered that the people about whom I was reading had been dead for over a century. I picked up my book and went on to the next poem.)
Reading The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker, a women who “wore [her] heart like a wet, red stain,” I am reminded of the sage* who informs us that “Happiness is a sad song” (10).
Although I’m no stranger to heartache and self-pity, Mrs. Parker obviously possesses, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, a heart not so airy as mine.
The sun’s gone dim, and
The moon’s turned black;
For I love him, and
He didn’t love back. (151)
Just about every human being who has ever lived has had a similar experience. But how many of us could condense so much feeling into eighteen beautifully collocated metrical syllables?
(A note on Light Verse: Kurt Vonnegut complained that critics mistook Science Fiction for a urinal, and that’s how I feel about this dismissive term often applied to rhymed poetry which possesses a healthy meter. Even when, for example, Phyllis McGinley writes of serious topics like nuclear annihilation, critics belittle such poetry by classifying it as light verse. This is why I am heartened by the growing presence of poets such as Mrs. Parker and Ogden Nash in the anthologies.)
Of course, the poetry of Dottie Parker would be a dreary place were it not for the courage she demonstrates by climbing back on that horse no matter how many times it throws her.
Better be left by twenty dears
Than lie in a loveless bed;
Better a loaf that’s wet with tears
Than cold, unsalted bread (134)
And the existential vivacity of the tender heart which continues to grab life by the horns for all its gusto is heroic indeed.
For contrition is hollow and wrathful,
And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory’s faithful)
There was nothing more fun than a man! (172)
Perhaps not coincidentally, the tenacity of Mrs. Parker’s amorousness is matched (if not bested) by the ferocity of her malevolence.
Then if friendships break and bend,
There’s little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die. (70)
Dorothy Parker is a legendary hurler of insults who penned several composites of enmity which she calls “hate poems.” Here are some of her more artful derisions:
(Serious Thinkers)
They talk about Humanity
As if they had just invented it; (224)
(Artists)
They point out all the different colors in a sunset
As if they were trying to sell it to you; (236)
(Free Verse)
They call it that
Because they have to give it away (237)
(Writers)
They are always pulling manuscripts out of their pockets,
And asking you to tell them, honestly—is it too daring? (237)
(Tragedians)
The Ones Who Made Shakespeare famous. (246)
(Psychoanalysts)
Where a Freud in need is a Freud indeed,
And we can all be Jung together (263)
(Overwrought Dramaturgy)
Of the Play That Makes You Think—
Makes you think you should have gone to the movies. (265)
(Married “Steppers-Out”)
They show you how tall Junior is with one hand,
And try to guess your weight with the other. (359)
(Bohemians)
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man who solicits insurance! (120)
(Men)
They’d alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired. (73)
(Past boyfriends)
The lads I’ve met in Cupid’s deadlock
Were—shall we say—born out of wedlock. (147)
*Schultz, Charles Happiness is a Warm Puppy
by Richard W. Bray
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