79. Bullet-Point Poetry

I have been forthcoming in my love for this text not just as a manual or a played game, but as a piece of written art. It is capital-L-Literature. I will stand by that claim all damn day.

Please indulge me, then, as I take a moment to be a literary geek and direct your intention to the motif of bullet-pointed lists. They are a stylistic decision that is part of the very aesthetics of the text. Flipping through the pages, the little bursts of lists catch the eye like little poems breaking up the blocks of text that surround them.

I propose that they don’t only look like poems; they act like poems too. They are discrete aesthetic packages with their own varied rhythms and line lengths, phrased and ordered as much for their sound as for their meaning.

This notion first struck me as I was pondering the MC’s principles and moves. Why are they presented in this order? Why are they phrased in this way? Surely there are easier ways to say “Make your move, but never speak its name”! “Never speak its name” sounds like the insistence of an old witch who has entrusted you with powerful magic that can have catastrophic side-effects if not handled properly. Phrasing it that way not only gives a dramatic flair to the last half of the principle, it also allows the principle to exist as a visual couplet with the preceding move, “Make your move, but misdirect.” And look at that alliteration there, all those Ms mumbling over each other. These are phrases created for their sound and music as much as for their meaning.

Nowhere is the bullet-list-as-poetry more apparent than in the threats chapter, the first half of which is practically a collection of small poems. Here is the Afflictions Threat Moves poem:

• Someone neglects duties, responsibilities, obligations.
• Someone flies into a rage.
• Someone takes self-destructive, fruitless, or hopeless action.
• Someone approaches, seeking help.
• Someone approaches, seeking comfort.
• Someone withdraws and seeks isolation.
• Someone proclaims the affliction to be a just punishment.
• Someone proclaims the affliction to be, in fact, a blessing.
• Someone refuses or fails to adapt to new circumstances.
• Someone brings friends or loved ones along (110).

Look at those first two lines. The first line is metrically the longest of the stanza, matched by the penultimate line. Everywhere in between there is a kind of rollercoaster ride of rhythm supported by couplets of repeated phrases. After the long climb of the first lines, the reader is given a short and metrically regular line: “Someone flies into a rage.” Those are two dactyls that land on a single hard beat: SOME-one flies IN-to a RAGE.” (Yeah, I love that.) There are the “less”-es in the next line, “fruitless” and “hopeless,” followed by the syntactical couplet of the next two lines. The line following the couplet is a thing of beauty as it opposes “someone approaches” with “someone withdraws,” but keeps the notion of “seeking.” In this case, Vincent and Meguey could easily have written “seeking,” but chose not to. Why? It could be for the sake of variation, which is a good enough reason. But in this case, “seeking isolation” is a much less rhythmic phrase than “seek isolation.” The emphasis for “isolation” falls on the third syllable, so the hard “seek” helps us find an early rhythmic foothold where as “seeking” gives us four un-emphasized beats in a row, which feels weak and wandering. Also, the “and” in that line gives “withdraws and” the same metrical weight as “approaches,” so “seeks” falls metrically in the same place as “seeking” in the previous lines.

Then the line lengths build up again with another high-count couplet before coming to a resolution of dactylic feet, echoing the second line of the poem, er, list. SOME-one re-FUS-es or FAILS to a-DAPT to new CIR-cumstances. By not ending on a hard beat, the line feels unfinished and lingering, a whimpering end that leads us into the final line, which echoes but varies the dactylic feet and ends on the emphasized “long” of “along.”

I’m not shitting around here.

If you think this list was not labored over to get the rhythm and movement of the words and sentences right, you are not paying attention. For those of you who think I am going to far, just look at the threats lists for brutes and landscapes. You’ll note that the Bakers condense opposites into one move in the brutes list: “Rigidly follow or defy authority,” and “Cling to or defy reason.” But in the landscape threat moves list, the different notions are given different lines: “Bar the way,” and “Open the way.” Those two could easily have been condensed into “Bar or open the way,” but they were not. The music of the list demanded the short lines to bounce off each other like you are tumbling down a verbal mountain.

Seriously, pull any bullet-point list out of the book and read it aloud to yourself and you’ll hear the music in the language and feel the importance of short lines and long lines as they pull you through the list with sometimes-coasting and sometimes-bumping rhythms. Hear the assonance and consonance and feel the weight of repetitions and echoes. The Bakers pay just as much attention to their regular prose in Apocalypse World but the poetry of their language is nowhere as apparent as it is in their bullet-point lists.