30 Poems in 30 Days: Word Choice
October 1, 2007 by John Hewitt
This is Day 28 of 30 Poems in 30 Days
Choose Your Words Wisely
Some poets write what they feel and spend very little time thinking about which word to use. They rely on instinct. Other poets spend a considerable amount of time trying to choose exactly the right words. They analyze and consider every word. I’m not going to advocate one method over the other. In my opinion, it is up to the poet to determine their approach to word choice. I am certainly in the middle of the road with my approach. I care about word choice, and I will often consider the benefits of one word over another, but I would consider myself completely sidetracked if I spent more than a few minutes deciding on whether or not one word is more perfect over another.
There are six general ways to influence and analyze your choice of words. The type of poem you write can make a difference in your choices. A poem with a metered form is going to involve choices about rhythm. A visually structured poem will entail a greater emphasis on appearance. A persona poem will require an increased focus on style. Beyond form, there is the individual style of the poet, which leads to subconscious word choices. Below are the six methods that you can use to determine word choice.
Meaning: The meaning of a word can be important in several ways. Obviously you want a word with the correct definition, but there are other considerations. Sometimes you want to reflect on the alternate meanings of a word in addition to the contextual meaning of a word. For example, you can say “we were filming the movie” or “we were shooting the movie”. Both phrases are correct in context, but the word shooting brings in other images because it has alternate meanings. Filming is the more precise word, which may be what the poet wants, but shooting has connotations of both violence and achievement (shooting a gun, shooting for the stars) that filming does not. These differences can have an overall effect on the poem, especially if reinforced with other word choices elsewhere in the poem.
Style: Another consideration is style and usage. Some words are more formal than others. For example, “cannot” and “can’t” are essentially the same word, but cannot is the accepted formal usage and can’t, like all contractions, is considered informal. Even more informal usages, such as slang or colloquialisms like cain’t, create a much different effect.
Rhythm: The rhythm of a word is essentially its meter, which I have discussed in earlier posts. It is the general pattern of the word, stressed syllables versus unstressed syllables. Even if you aren’t attempting to write a poem with a formal meter, you may find that you want a particular rhythm, especially for words on the same line.
Sound: The way a word sounds is always a consideration in poetry. The following words all mean essentially (though not exactly) the same thing: apron, bib, smock, pinafore. Each of these words has a different sound. Apron and pinafore have softer and longer sounds compared with bib and smock. If the exact meaning of the word isn’t your primary concern, then you might choose one of the four because it fits your sound requirements. It may rhyme, be alliterative, be assonant or add any of a number of other qualities to your poem.
Length: The length of a word can have very definite effects on a poem. The eye and even the voice tend to move more quickly over short words than long, even if the total number of syllables per line is the same. Short words tend to present as more active than long words. Long words tend to present as more formal and intellectual than short words.
Appearance: The final consideration in word choice is how the word looks on the page. For some poets, especially those who work with visual structures, this can be important. The words “little” and “modest” have similar meanings, the same number of letters and the same stresses, but the letters of the word little are (overall) taller and narrower than the letters in modest. For a visually-oriented poet, this can determine which word gets used.
Today’s Poetry Assignment
Write a poem that either uses no words longer than five letters or no words shorter than five letters.
Today’s Recommended Poet
Jenny Mueller’s first book of poetry, Bonneville
Poems By Jenny Mueller
Related links
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: Persona Poems (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: About Forms and Lists (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: A Brief Glossary of Meter (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: The Good the Bad and the Meter (1.000)
- 30 Poems in 30 Days: Syllabic Verse (1.000)
Contact John Hewitt
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Email: hewitt@poewar.comPhone: (520) 261-6104
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Picture at Coronado Island
We walk along the beach
Third day as man and wife
San Diego in back of us
Waves in front of us
We hold hands and talk
White gulls drop from the sky
They grab fish or bugs
They take off again
As we move into their way
We stop and get a man to take a photo
The two of us
Arms in arm in the sand
White caps cover our hair
My shirt whips up and down
With the wind in our faces
We smile and relax
So many plans just done
So many more to go
The flash goes off
And we are on our way
To what comes next
Love Today
Cure my heart
in all it’s glory
give to me
your life long story.
as we walk
the sun arose
i hear you gasp
fill both heart and soul.
Never apart
we walk the line
our feet the same
his face so fine.
I give you my heart
you give me yours
we get back home
and open our room door.
we give to each other
we show our love
I look in your eyes
as we float above.
Our body like one
in your arms I fall
my own is yours
I’m your above all.
John, I love your poem and I got some inspiration from your’s to write mine!
Well just for fun, I changed the *or* to an *and* and then kept playing
forge- t with crack ers an
d err or s old a movie films
a flim sy how shift makes
me-mo(i) -rs/-ry i- n head years
like-s n to dog longe vity, a
life o r fina l i’m be ing me
lodra matic autom atic a
u to cr attic ruler passe
d past times rewri t ten as
wry or light learn ing us
e very new id e(t) a ,a brut
us is a self a royal a pain
forge- t with crack ers an
d err or s old a movie films
a flim sy how shift makes
(it lost the 4 columns in html but you might get the idea)
Pearl: No, dammit, can’t quite get it, and copying and trying to do it for myself got me lost and you scrambled (in ways you probably didn’t intend)! I can sorta get 3 columns, not 4. Would it work if you did big tab spaces to mark the columns? Or is that what you did? I tried using the Word thing of dividing page into 4 columns, but I would have had to already know how your text was arranged to make it fit.
John: Lovely! The instruction transcended, so the poem seems uncontrived and one feels it could only have been written in these words.
Rianon: Bravo for following your inspiration and joining us!
As for me, I am all out of sequence by now but gradually catching up.
Pearl: Oh no, take it all back – I just looked at it with slightly unfocused eyes and saw the columns. (Slightly wobbly, but still I got ‘em.)
Rosemary,
It’s wonderful to be here.
A RAW TABASCO PEPPER
Pale green, it sat
on the side dish to the curry
among cool bits of salad.
Idly I chose it, and bit.
I felt my teeth melt
and my eyes pop
as the roof of my head blew off.
A swoop for the glass of milk
in front of the diner on my left,
and I drank it down in one gulp.
I never heard Bill laugh so much.
All those years I used to skite
about being able to eat red hot
chili, curry and the like.
It must have got on his wick
but I never knew till then.
Well, he had his gloat
and did he enjoy it.
It went on a long time after.
Until the night
our hosts in Java fed us
that very same dish.
I saw him reach out
for that cool green salad bit.
I kept my face blank.
I said not a word.
The next thing was the yell.
Then he leapt out of his chair,
which hit the floor with a crash,
and tore out of the room in tears,
his mouth wide open as he tried
to take huge gulps of air.
Yes – best to serve it cold.
Pearl: i did my best to get your columns back. I hope that gives at least a hint of what you were shooting for.
Rosemary: I’m glat it gave that impression. I did actually spend a lot of time replacing my first choice words with ones that fit the rules. I think it worked out well in the end.
Jenny Mueller. Yes. Wow!
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Word Choice [...]
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Word Choice [...]
A Talk with David
The day we had to bury his baby girl,
David told me that there was no God.
He said he might later act like there was,
but it would be fake. There was no God.
I was too young to know what to say
so I said he ought to sleep for now.
I don’t know how I wound up alone
with him in the first place. I bet it was
since I was so young that he let me in.
His eyes grew heavy. I left his room
and found my mom and dad. They sat
with his wife as she told a story about
the girl who had just died like it had
been a long time since she had been alive.
My mom said, I’m sure she’s up there now,
and hears every word you’ve said.
I hoped David got to sleep, but if he heard
my mom talk, he didn’t start a fight about it:
he let the words pass, right or wrong,
just like I think God would have done.
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