Kurt Vonnegut's How To Write With Style

Kurt Vonnegut. I’ve never heard of him, at least ‘til this point in my life. I don’t know how, because he seems like the kind of author we’d of learned about or even have read some of his pieces by now. I like his style. He’s one of those writers that talks to the reader as opposed to talking above them. He uses those simple words that Stephen King was talking about in Toolbox, a cut and dry vocabulary. No fluff like that Ralph Waldo Emerson. Based off of How to Write With Style alone, it’s easy to tell that Vonnegut writes with a certain swagger. He mentions the key to writing with that style is injecting your writing with a little bit of what makes you you. Your pauses between sentences, your vocabulary… just your overall mannerisms. They bring life to the otherwise lifeless words on this or any other
page.
Almost like everything you write takes away a little piece of you for itself, and I guess your writing will keep doing so until you just… think you’ve run your course. When you feel that you’ve told all the stories you needed to tell. Vonnegut then goes on to talk about role of dialect in writing. They provide the author with a brand, a one-of-a-kind, audible fingerprint. It should be cherished, he says, and treasured. It’s what’ll let your readers know who you are and that you’re speaking purely from the heart, without a trace of pedantic vocabulary, in turn convincing your audience to open up to your writing. You just have to remember to still adhere to the rules of whatever dialect you happen to have because like Vonnegut says, Picasso-style “jazz writing” will only stray you further and further away from those willing to give your work a
chance. Robert Frost’s The Figure A Poem Makes deals more with nature of poetry and the extent of its power. Its power to make a reader feel, think, and teach. The “figure” that a poem makes is its form, a structure made up of universal truths that, in the end, provide the reader some wisdom based around the human condition. Some advice on what it means to be human and what it means to be live within nature. I found it interesting that Frost seems to have a dislike towards the… arrogance of scholars and philosophers. They approach things like poems with a mindset based around their understanding of logic, and then from there, begin to analyze the piece. Frost thinks that poems should instead be evaluated through our emotions.