“Get rid of the prepositional phrases,”
my poetry group tells me, “you use too many.”
But ridding my writing of prepositions
severs relationships. It’s all about relationships,
and prepositions show the way.
They tell us what to expect--
“She’ll be comin’ round the mountain”--
or how it happened—
“He died with a hammer in his hand.”
Prepositions describe the scene:
Wordworth’s daffodils show up
“beside the lake, beneath the trees,
fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”
Prepositions form metaphors and similes:
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.”
And in the hands of Billy Collins, they tug on our emotions:
“No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.”
Speaking of battles, I’ll fight for the prepositions!


© by Juliane McAdam.
Used with the author's permission.