SlickNickeL
Full Member
- Aug 23, 2015
- 158
- 75
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
You have a good point, but let's think like a poet. This is the second time this has come up today so I will repeat this post from a different site.
A beginner poet just rhymes words.
An intermediate poet learns the rules and studies the masters.
An advanced poet, advances to learning what his "muse" is by diving to the deepest depths, of how a single word could possibly change the outcome of the meaning, of the whole stanza or poem.
A master of poetry has a "voice" and knows why a word is placed in a particular spot, at a certain time, to provoke the feeling or meaning that is desired by the author.
In Fenn's case, he used a poem to divulge the location of his "special place".
He wasn't given the opportunity to inject any real elements of poetry except for rhyme and meter because, the words he choose were to expose a place on a map, and not express any of the types of figurative meanings that poets use. Symbol, personification, metaphor, synecdoche etc. are simply not present, so the puzzle becomes very simple to a poet who is looking for a set of clues buried in a poem. Symbol is very weak in FF's poem and only in a way that represents a single word, to a place or spot on a map, and not it's pure form in which a poet is accustomed to using.
Here is a great example.
WWWH
The word HALT.
Why this word?
Why not, "Where warm waters stop" or "pause" or "cease"
As a poet, I would have wrote, "Where warm waters rest" but that's me as a poet, and not the architect of a poem/puzzle.
So what's so darn important about the word halt? It's MEANING!!!
It has three separate meanings attached to it with all three meanings applied, and valid for this one word. Almost in a sense of 3 dimensions, all at the same time and ALL correct!
No other word can do this. It must be the word "halt"
Definition of Halt:
A place to stop.
In this case, it's the place where warm water stops, or continues from this point on as warm water after pooling, and warming from the Folsom Falls cold spring water.
Halt, also means lame.
In this case, WWWH is a lame clue.
Finally, lame is a foreshadowing of things to come! It relates directly to our horse at Folsom Falls. This will later, help establish a correct path to the horse head by tying in all of the other "horse" references that come later in the puzzle/poem.
All three meanings correct, and all three used and applied simultaneously to the one single word, halt.
Now, do this for every single word in the puzzle/poem and it becomes clear, why only certain words were used, and not other poetically tasteful word that would be more suited.
Each and every word is important on to itself. Some have several meanings where only one is correct, and some, as in the word "halt" have three separate meanings that are applied and all are correct.
