The Lyric Present: Simple Present Verbs in English Poems

Abstract

Poets writing in English frequently use the simple present form of action verbs where the progressive form would be more natural in speech. Probably they do so in order to take advantage of overtones resident in the simple form, overtones that permit a physical action to seem timeless yet permanent, pastlike yet edging toward the future, repeatable yet provisional, urgent yet distant, ceremonious and archaic. Never quite a stage direction, and different in feeling even from temporally unlocated past tense verbs, the action verb cast in the lyric present tense serves every epoch of English literary history differently but is always expressive of the poets' deepest perceptions and fears. An appendix reports and comments on an extensive survey of the frequency with which British and American poets have used progressive forms.