7/22/2020 ADVERBS OR NOT by Marianne Boruch | Poetry Foundation

F E AT U R E D B LO G G E R

ADVERBS OR NOT
BY M A R I A N N E B O R U C H

Since lockdown and now its loosening at the end of May, the governors declaring
for good or ill their phases for opening stores and restaurants a sliver then halfsies
then full-faced as the moon, I've been dreaming madly. Not just that, but the
dreams come strangely, rarely sweetly, mostly horribly. Also deeply deeply deeply
is how I sleep these nights. Note the big LY trailing behind so many words in
these last two sentences, doing its job to connote and drum up meaning via a
sideways glance.

To calm myself, I've looked into the adverb as institution, not mere linguistic
flourish. This curious part of speech is defined in my Catholic grade school's
Voyages in English as if we were on murky waters, staring up at dim stars, while
any adverb worth its verb drives our boat of dreams, and fine-tunes. Whoever the
author-guardians explaining away those voyages were, they got emphatic about
one thing: adverbs answer questions. Of time –"when, how often?" (again, before,
earlier, soon, now). Or "place" (above, away, below, down, overhead). Then "degree"
comes into it, "how much or how little" (almost, quite, rather, very).

Most dramatically a world is nuanced by that polite but bullying ly tacked on as

an ending syllable. "Adverbs of manner," my old textbook calls them in its
"CLASSIFICATION OF ADVERBS" (easily, fervently, quickly, thoroughly). All
happy states of being, more or less. But how about suspiciously, gruesomely,
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unbelievably, hopelessly? Or broken-heartedly? Who knew a book about the wiles

and ways of English published in 1951 (and still hauled out when I hit 8th grade,
11 years later) would be all about dodging the full fate of young learners? And
maybe that's good to do, upbeat as hope because it is hope. After all, the planet
does keep spinning—to invoke a popular soap opera of the era, As the World
Turns, loved by my mother who liked to watch it over a lunch of canned peaches
and cottage cheese.

I think I must be thinking about poetry all the time now, given my mulling over
such things through our day after day of rising then falling then rising death
counts from Covid, an endless Ritual of the Unnerved to note those numbers.
Meanwhile I keep dreaming, all this woven into and playing out in the wee hours
of my unconscious to make terrible dreams. A friend, a writer in New York emails
me that she should be writing but isn't. Two others admit that on Zoom. Another
writes he cannot face poetry, his or anyone else's really. Take heart, I want to tell
them—I don't know—something like: We have the rest of our lives, right?

No, not right. And never as easy as cliché would have it, to soothe despair.

Nevertheless, the little workaholic adverb is still at it framed and semi-fossilized in

its full chapter (pages 348-58) in my Voyages in English, fifteen well-meaning
numbered examples displaying its chops. The nuns said what mattered was usage,
habit and its matter-of-fact how a crucial part of understanding anything, like a
bicycle chain engaged, right foot down, then the left, to make that spare brilliant
machine run and get you someplace. It's as common as sense could be, the
adverb's shade and tweaking to charge even the fuzzy past and future into an
edged right now:

2. Breathlessly she pushed the curtains aside.

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3. This task will be rather difficult.

I walk into Kroger in a mad-dash hunting/gathering attempt—my turn this week

to go out masked, with shopping list, suddenly uber-organized, no lollygagging,
and trying to obey the arrows on the floor: up past flour and yeast, down past
crackers and cocoa, shot like a shiny marble in a human-size pinball machine. My
grand feat for the day. My poem for the day.

Decades ago, in college, I lived in a tiny upstairs room in a ramshackle house I

shared with friends, a few I still know. My window looked down to the street.
Once, I noticed a housemate talking to someone out there, nothing special until
their gestures shifted unaccountably—cartoonish, impossible jerking angles of
elbow and head and hand notched up, past full speed, gone haywire. That was
when I realized in the dream itself that I was dreaming what I saw in the street,
that this was still a nap, that I was only dreaming I was awake. Which shocked me.
I tried to come to, for real. And could not. Tried again. Again. And got scared,
then terrified: my god, would I never? Never again this life I sort of loved and sort
of didn't? In weird moments like now, I wonder if any of that was my trapdoor
into poetry. (Just open, and fall through.) The fact that the dream was realer than
real time? That I woke relieved I hadn't lost my mind or at least hadn't checked-
out for good? Or that mystery itself is both out there, and in here.

The pandemic threat is so alarmingly NOT visible, our fight with it officially
imaginary. Except for shots of the ICUs on the news—the ventilators, the testing
—and those small heartbreaking details of lives lived on the PBS News Hour, the
faces and stilled gestures of beloveds lost to the virus each week, which bring
home what is so central to poetry: the power of pure image to cherish and
continue.

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There are many mantras. I've been told they should be meaningless; the point is
repetition into a certain mindlessness (read: timelessness) at the center of the
world and the self. Back to Chapter Six of that textbook where my poor part of
speech still spins through its final category: "Adverbs of affirmation and negation
tell whether a fact is true or false" like yes, no, indeed, doubtless, not. Thus:

10. The bird was not in its cage.

There's also the adverb's home ground again, of manner and time, the last two
examples on that startling, beloved list:

14. I shuddered excessively as I passed the haunted house.

15. The soul will live forever.

Originally Published: July 14th, 2020

Quick Tags

Poet and essayist Marianne Boruch grew up in Chicago. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry,
including, most recently, The Anti-Grief (2019), Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing (2016); Cadaver,
Speak (2014); The Book of Hours (2011), which won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Grace, Fallen from
(2008);...

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