> My next problem, though, is; what exactly is a cliché?<

It's stuff you've heard before, and you know you've heard before, and
don't be foolin' yourself about it just because it fits the rhythm or
the rhyme or it's just easier to leave it in.

> There´s no problem identifying the very well known one´s - He was
> on his last legs but he put a brave face on it and set his nose to
> the grindstone. But is there a grey area? - typical combinations of
> words that are frequently used in everyday communication. For
> example, is ´he stood with pounding heart´ a cliché? If one changed
> `pounding´ to `beating´ would it still be a cliché? If one changed
> `pounding´ to `wavering´ I guess it wouldn´t be a cliché (or would
> it?) but it wouldn´t mean the same.<<

Exactly -- it wouldn't mean the same. The challenge is to mean what
you mean without saying it the same way countless others have said
it: "What oft was thought but ne'er so well express'd." After all, if
you just say the same thing in the same way, can you really say it's
your poem? Well, I suppose you can, nowadays: you could string a
bunch of cliches together and call it a "found poem". You may even be
able to simply steal another person's poem and relineate it and call
it a "found poem" -- I don't know; it would be interesting to see
someone do it to the people who write that kind of poems and see if
they're still as enthusiastic about "found poems" after their work is
where poems are "found" as they were when they were "finding" poems
in other peoples' work. That always reminds me of an acquaintance of
mine who whenever the teachers spoke of Columbus discovering America
would put on his best ghetto black accent and say "Ah think Ah'll
jes' "discover" me that fine Cadillac across the street."

> If one changed the phrase to
> `the blood beat in his temples´ we are back with a cliché (aren´t
> we?)<<

Yes.

> So if a poet, any poet, wished to include this sensation in a
> poem, how is (s)he to do it? And just how strict and self-critical
> does the poet need to be? Should we be suspicious of combining the
> noun `sun´ and the verb `rise´? It´s been used so many times, after
> all.<<

Yes, exactly -- you should be wary of it. That's not to say you can't
say "sunrise" or say "the sun rose over the horizon" or "the rising
sun illuminated her face" and the like; but you must be suspicious of
whether that particular locution actually gets you further along in
what you're trying to say or mean without your readers reacting by
turning the page because they've read all that before.

> Isn´t it a cliché to keep naming those tall things in the
> garden that are covered with leaves `trees´? In a sense all
> language is a cliché, that´s why other people can recognise the
> meaning. <

Only in a sense; in another sense every word is a buried metaphor; in
another sense every word is merely a convention; it depends on how
you look at language.  Do green ideas sleep furiously? Does that make
sense in any way?

It also depends to some extent on how you think about poetry: what is
it, really?  Is it something other than a species of rhetoric, or is
a poet is a kind of promoter or propagandist?

Words, though, such as "tree" or "horse", have both denotative and
connotative meanings, and they have synonyms and antonyms and grammar
allows us to say such things as "not untreelike" (and if the mind
isn't boggled by that it is clearly not unboggled) to mean something
akin to "tree".  So if someone writes "The knight rode into town on
his spavined steed" or "The knight rode into town on his magnificent
nag" how is that different than "The knight rode into town on his
horse"?


Marcus Bales

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