'Vibrant Words'

Vibrant—isn’t that what we poets want all our words to be? We’d like to think our personal muse delivers splendid poems ready made, but the truth is, we often have to reach for words that are elusive if not downright recalcitrant.

Luckily, help is at hand in a new book, Vibrant Words: ideas and inspirations for poets, by Erica Goss. The widely published Goss, who is poet laureate of Los Gatos, California, has collected a rich trove of poem-starting ideas and strategies. As an inveterate collector of found poetry, I particularly like this prompt:

 One Word

I found the word “languish” on the sidewalk a few weeks ago. As a poet, I’m always on the hunt for that special word, the one that will trigger some kind of response in poetry. I could hardly believe my luck in finding “languish.” It made me remember the “one-word prompt,” a writing exercise that I use often. Find a word that moves you in some way. Now look it up in the dictionary and write down all of its meanings. “Languish” has these: 1. Be neglected or deprived; 2. Become less successful; 3. Pine. Aha! I see that “pine,” both a verb and a noun, has possibilities. I start to wonder about the etymology of “pine,” a word that signifies a tree and an emotional/physical state of suffering. Look for a word that moves you in some way. Look up its various meanings, in both a dictionary and thesaurus. Look it up in a foreign language dictionary and see how it’s defined in another language. Ponder its associations. Write.© Erica Goss, 2014

Other suggestions are equally compelling, as are the poems (some her own) that Goss includes in the book. Vibrant Words, published by PushPen Press, can give you a much-needed nudge when you’re staring at that blank piece of paper.

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