Do you have a pet poetry hate, something that has you reaching for the red pen, a word that you think should be barred from all use in poems? Here are three of ours.
I don't dislike these 3 words, or indeed any word provided it's doing a good job. I particularly like the concluding lines from Seamus Heaneys "Clearances":
Deep-planted and long gone, my coeval
Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,
Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere,
A soul ramifying and forever
Silent, beyond silence listened for.
On the other hand there is one word I dislike, mainly used outside poetry: amazing. It is a blanket word that smothers true evaluation, and is used lazily.
Amazing is a filler-word, one of those superlatives that does get overused, but it's in the ha'penny place compared to Awesome. Both will eventually wear out their welcome in everyday speech, and become replaced by other place-holders.
In Shakespeare's Pythonesque Sonnet 130, he satirises Elizabethan love-poem similes that compare cheeks to 'roses' or eyes to 'the sun', and I think that's probably the best way of dealing with overused (or overfondled) words: reinvigorate them by dropping them into a different place/context/metaphor. I thought I'd never see 'golden' appear in a good, late 20th century poem till I discovered Wright's hammock poem in which 'the droppings of last year's horses / blaze up into golden stones.'
I love that Heaney sequence btw. He made such words as dig, heft, hoked, bog, neb, etc. very much his own. Paterson noted that 'his poetic scales are so finely calibrated you could weigh air and light in them.'
Thrum/thrumming. I hate it. No probs with shard so long as used properly. Generally don't believe there's any word that shouldn't be used in a poem. But almost every poem I read has 'thrum' in it, and I'm sick of it.
I believe that we should never 'ban' words from poetry. No word is 'wrong'. I hate the whole idea. We write what we write and that's it. I've been told/lectured to over so many years, don't do this, don't do that I've got to the age where I do what I want when I am writing my own work though probably different when editing others, ha, ha, but only ever suggestions. I'm tired of 'this is what good poetry is'. I don't like the idea that poets are trying to be 'clever' all the time. What's wrong with stretching yourself? Going in a different direction? Why can't we be more open and less closed down? I realise I've probably crashed any hope of you taking another of my poems but I do feel strongly about this.
'Liminal' and 'shard' annoy me. Overused as a way of showing how clever a poet is, knowing words that no-one uses in daily life. I don't want any words to be barred, but some may stop me publishing a poem with them in.
Brilliant commentary by these 3 writers, which had me both guffawing and hanging my head in shame at the fact I am guilty of employing ALL THREE words in poems past. Try guffawing at the same time as hanging YOUR head, it buckles the trachea something terrible. The hospital staff here are lovely though.
That was SUCH fun to read, hunkering in a bunker while Storm Eowyn begins to attack the garden fence -- and she hasn't even going yet. In Scotland where I live, a bunker is also the word for the kitchen surfaces (put those bags on the bunker, will you?) and I do remember that at one time people bunked off school and hunkered in a bunker. They probably do something else these days. But me? I hanker after a bit of bunker to hunker in, though I am thoroughly sick of the ubiquitous hunker too, which for some reason makes me think of thighs, heavy thighs. And I can't abide the over-used 'heft' either, Steve, so it was absolutely time for that put-down: heft deftly bested. But 'palimpsest'? Hm. I remember twenty or thirty years ago having to look it up after reading it in a poem. That poem taught me the word and ever since (when reading it in poems) I've felt smug because I KNOW what palimpsest means and it makes me feel powerful. But it's hellish to say aloud, something poets should bear in mind, and when I meet it from now on, I'm going to feel less warmly. Chris has forefronted the imp in palimpsest. There's no going back....
This had me spitting out my coffee in (good-humoured) disagreement! 'Heft' as a verb -- pretentious, unnecessary, 99.9% of the time does nothing that 'lift' does not. 'Heft' as a noun -- short, onomatapoeic and four-letter Anglo-Saxon. Does what it says on the tin.
I don't dislike these 3 words, or indeed any word provided it's doing a good job. I particularly like the concluding lines from Seamus Heaneys "Clearances":
Deep-planted and long gone, my coeval
Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,
Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere,
A soul ramifying and forever
Silent, beyond silence listened for.
On the other hand there is one word I dislike, mainly used outside poetry: amazing. It is a blanket word that smothers true evaluation, and is used lazily.
Amazing is a filler-word, one of those superlatives that does get overused, but it's in the ha'penny place compared to Awesome. Both will eventually wear out their welcome in everyday speech, and become replaced by other place-holders.
In Shakespeare's Pythonesque Sonnet 130, he satirises Elizabethan love-poem similes that compare cheeks to 'roses' or eyes to 'the sun', and I think that's probably the best way of dealing with overused (or overfondled) words: reinvigorate them by dropping them into a different place/context/metaphor. I thought I'd never see 'golden' appear in a good, late 20th century poem till I discovered Wright's hammock poem in which 'the droppings of last year's horses / blaze up into golden stones.'
I love that Heaney sequence btw. He made such words as dig, heft, hoked, bog, neb, etc. very much his own. Paterson noted that 'his poetic scales are so finely calibrated you could weigh air and light in them.'
'curated'
(Not that it’s a word used in poems, of course, so much as about them.)
Thrum/thrumming. I hate it. No probs with shard so long as used properly. Generally don't believe there's any word that shouldn't be used in a poem. But almost every poem I read has 'thrum' in it, and I'm sick of it.
I believe that we should never 'ban' words from poetry. No word is 'wrong'. I hate the whole idea. We write what we write and that's it. I've been told/lectured to over so many years, don't do this, don't do that I've got to the age where I do what I want when I am writing my own work though probably different when editing others, ha, ha, but only ever suggestions. I'm tired of 'this is what good poetry is'. I don't like the idea that poets are trying to be 'clever' all the time. What's wrong with stretching yourself? Going in a different direction? Why can't we be more open and less closed down? I realise I've probably crashed any hope of you taking another of my poems but I do feel strongly about this.
WORKSHOP
Find your personal lexicon, your best
and precious word-hoard. Make a list
of favourites –– hoard, lexicon, spindrift, drought,
saccade, arabesque, smithereens –– the kind your mouth
was shaped for: socket, vermilion, pilfer, dross ––
Now think of the sort of characters you’d cross
the road to avoid, ones you’d curse with a grim
vocabulary –– relatable, loser, ‘going
forward’, mansplaining, Sad! –– and cheerful tips
like wake-up-and-smell-the… read my… Close their lips
till they swallow your medicine, this nourishing
they were born to spit out, sing.
'Liminal' and 'shard' annoy me. Overused as a way of showing how clever a poet is, knowing words that no-one uses in daily life. I don't want any words to be barred, but some may stop me publishing a poem with them in.
Brilliant commentary by these 3 writers, which had me both guffawing and hanging my head in shame at the fact I am guilty of employing ALL THREE words in poems past. Try guffawing at the same time as hanging YOUR head, it buckles the trachea something terrible. The hospital staff here are lovely though.
That was SUCH fun to read, hunkering in a bunker while Storm Eowyn begins to attack the garden fence -- and she hasn't even going yet. In Scotland where I live, a bunker is also the word for the kitchen surfaces (put those bags on the bunker, will you?) and I do remember that at one time people bunked off school and hunkered in a bunker. They probably do something else these days. But me? I hanker after a bit of bunker to hunker in, though I am thoroughly sick of the ubiquitous hunker too, which for some reason makes me think of thighs, heavy thighs. And I can't abide the over-used 'heft' either, Steve, so it was absolutely time for that put-down: heft deftly bested. But 'palimpsest'? Hm. I remember twenty or thirty years ago having to look it up after reading it in a poem. That poem taught me the word and ever since (when reading it in poems) I've felt smug because I KNOW what palimpsest means and it makes me feel powerful. But it's hellish to say aloud, something poets should bear in mind, and when I meet it from now on, I'm going to feel less warmly. Chris has forefronted the imp in palimpsest. There's no going back....
Can I add 'gentle' as verb to the list?
Much of this is very funny! made my morning...
CJC
I'd got 'heft' as a total no-no before I scrolled to down to see your excellent piece.
Thank you for articulating why I cringe at ‘heft’.
This had me spitting out my coffee in (good-humoured) disagreement! 'Heft' as a verb -- pretentious, unnecessary, 99.9% of the time does nothing that 'lift' does not. 'Heft' as a noun -- short, onomatapoeic and four-letter Anglo-Saxon. Does what it says on the tin.
A great read - that brought a smile to my Friday morning - thank you