As a child I was a passionate lover of all things Dr. Seuss. Among my most favorite books, of course, was The Lorax. Beyond the messages of consumerism, industrialism, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself, The Lorax is a very human story with remarkable points to this very day. Can nature sustain man? Is it right for man to demand so much of nature? Man can create wonders, indeed, but at what cost?
Adversely, if nature is supreme, is it right for nature to halt a market that supports other people, indeed a great number of people? One could bow either way and still be in the wrong, depending on a certain point of view. The Lorax asks tough questions that make children and adults wonder to this very day.
Strangely, this modern age has not produced a Dr. Seuss to ask similar questions or new points of the technological age. Adversely, we have produced an age of "Once-lers". Yes, I use the term "Once-ler" to describe a one-and done way of thinking, my way or the highway. Be it business, politics, the environment, we are all "Once-ler's" now, even in the field of writing and perhaps especially so.
No one writes like Dr. Seuss, and people would likely laugh if you tried. Indeed, I would argue that the man was the last master of Poetic Edda, or poetry collections with a certain way of speaking, telling stories with words that had a deeper meaning. The Norse Vikings were perhaps the best known for their use of poetry to describe the great feats of their gods. Other writers and cultures adopted similar word of mouth or word to paper ways like the Poetic Edda stemming right into the modern age.
The closest thing I have ever seen come to it is JK Rowling's unique and fantastical use of words and phrases in the Harry Potter books. Words like "Voldemort" conjure such great images now that we know them, but imagine the joy in creating these things in the beginning.
It's something I strive to try to do, what all authors ultimately seek. Look at JRR Tolkein, a linguist who created his own languages first and from them sprang Bilbo, Frodo, Sauron and all the rest. Indeed, we would not have Middle Earth, dungeons and dragons and such without Tolkein's own Poettic Edda. It is incredibly hard to find words that don't exist, then try to construct them into reason. Seuss worked meticulously on his words, just as we all do. Indeed, he said that the key to good writing was "meticulosity" a truly Seussian word.
Most of his words were of his own cadence, a sing-song rhyming meter, a Poetic Edda I would like to dub Seussian. Let's take something from the Lorax.
"You won't see the Once-ler
Don't knock at his door
He stays in his Lurkim
on top of his store
He lurks in his Lurkim
cold under the roof
where he makes his own clothes
out of miff-muffered moof."
-The Lorax, Dr. Seuss
First, there's the term "lurkim" and what a perfect way to to describe the building we see, a jutting juxtaposed old thing out of a Salvador Dali painting. What is a lurkim? We may at least understand that it's a home of a sort, and he lurks there like a hermit never leaving. Indeed he 'lurks there." What better place to lurk?
Again such pleasure is taken in the creation of a word, of a phrase to describe a place where something called "Once-ler" would live. Then we get into a more fantastical phrase. "Miff-muffered moof." As adults, as writers, if we didn't know where this came from we might scoff. "What in the blazes is 'miff-muffered moof!' That's not a word! Cross it out! Come up with proper words and context for your rhyme!"
Here is the genius of Theodor Geissel. It doesn't have to make sense in an overt sense, even though he worked diligently in his specific choice of the words to describe it. The imagination does the rest of the work. We might imagine tiny sootball shaped things with a thousand legs, like living dust bunnies crawling along the floor only to be scooped up and knitted into feeble fabric clothing this strange person. This is the power of Poetic Edda.
Suess goes on to set a certain mystery and aura of the Once-ler, and then later of the Lorax. Their story is a cautionary tale worthy of a bard's song. This is something we desperately need of our writers, our poets and our bloggers of the modern age.
As writers, we look to men like Suess and Tolkein. We talk ceaselessly of sentences, verbs, nouns, grammar, and beyond all that the meaning or meaninglessness of our work or the work of others. As children, we write more freely with open hearts and minds, and Seuss embodies that as an adult writing for children. The ultimate power is in the lesson of words and that we create our own Poetic Edda.
