To compose poetry for the fun of a long, difficult dictionary, one can embrace the constraints and opportunities presented by rare, unwieldy, or archaic words. This approach turns the dictionary from a tool of definition into a source of playful and challenging inspiration. The fun lies in juxtaposing obscure vocabulary with mundane topics, forcing a poetic form upon the bizarre, or creating an atmosphere of faux-profundity.
The following poem and accompanying writing prompt illustrate this approach.
Poem: Lexicographical Fatuity
My fatuous quest, a recondite game,
to find a word, a logophile's aim,
not dulcet or serene, not facile nor profane,
but one whose bulk could fill a page with pain.
I turned the tome, a bibliophile's repose,
past egregious boasts and empyreal throes,
past the brumous mists and cachaemic prose,
seeking a word that nobody else knows.
Beneath macadamized streets and peripatetic feet,
I found my prize, a linguistic sweet.
A kettlestitch, a whifflery complete,
a nimiety of words I now must mete.
The xenagogue of thought, a path to chart,
the evisceration of my weary heart,
a sestina formed, a fractured work of art,
a quatsch of meaning torn and rent apart.
And so, my illeist self begins to prate,
my obambulating verse, a fate
of obfuscation, ponderous and late,
for readers baffled by my lexical freight.
Creating poetry with difficult, even obscure, vocabulary offers a fascinating and challenging exercise in language. The friction between arcane words and familiar poetic forms can generate surprising new textures and meanings.
1. Ontic Interstitial
This poem uses a highly formal, almost scientific, tone to describe a mundane, almost absurd, subject: the fleeting space between thoughts.
The aegilops of a second's thought,
that ontic flicker, barely caught,
where chthonic doubts begin to form
and rage, a nascent, mental storm.
A pabulum for anxious minds,
the interstitial quiet finds
its demiurge, a will unbound,
in silence where no words are found.
A kakistocracy of fears,
an apophenia that nears,
but in that silent, lucid space,
a noumenal and perfect place.
So let the ataraxia fall,
and heed the mind's recursive call,
for in the paraclete of thought,
a silent victory is wrought.
2. Of Anapest and Aesthesis
This piece adopts a dramatic, rhythmic voice and focuses on the subjective nature of perception and consciousness.
Upon the anapest, the heart begins to beat,
a rhythmic, thunderous, insistent, slow retreat.
The aesthesis of senses, sharpened to a pain,
perceiving truths a mind cannot contain.
The autodidact of sorrows, learned alone,
of whispered truths the winds have never known.
A solipsist in solitude, a prisoner of thought,
convinced a world for them alone was brought.
This thaumaturgist, of visions and of dreams,
where eidetic memory a new reality seems.
But in the final hour, when the last veil is rent,
the syzygy of ego and of universe is spent.
3. Elegy for a Neophyte
A free-verse poem with a narrative tone, using esoteric language to describe the journey from ignorance to painful knowledge.
The neophyte, in their brumous fog,
believed in words, in ink, in the printed log.
A polyglot of texts they would pursue,
a prolepsis of knowledge, fresh and new.
They learned the epistemology of being,
the peripatetic truth of seeing.
They saw the verisimilitude of light,
and watched it coruscate and burn so bright.
But in the ataraxy of the silent mind,
they found a truth, a brutal, final kind.
The cathexis of illusions, finally released,
the silent knowing, that would not be appeased.
They sought the world in volumes, stacked and high,
but found the universe, was in their own mind's eye.
The Ocher of Abundance, Poems-Volume
The goal remains to find the poetry in words that are often considered ponderous or obscure.
4. The Architect of Ineluctable Decay
This poem uses architectural and biological terms to describe a process of inevitable, natural deterioration.
A clinamen of decay, a subtle shift,
the phoresis of rot, a morbid gift.
The entablature of self begins to sag,
a brachiate of lichen, on a weathered crag.
The exuviae of youth, a withered shell,
the tergiversation of the soul as well.
A spoliation of the past, a slow disgrace,
the tessellated memories, erased from every face.
This deictic finger points to what was once,
a synecdoche of self, a mere pretense.
The obmutescence of the will, a silent sigh,
the inchoate whispers of what’s left to die.
5. Rhapsody of the Luddite Muse
A rhythmic poem that uses industrial and technological terminology to express a critique of modernity and a longing for something more tangible.
The ergodic progress, a stochastic beat,
the scintillating promise, a technical deceit.
The automaton of habit, a prescribed routine,
a congeries of comforts, sterile and pristine.
The ephectic mind, a rebarbative dread,
of every automated word, and every thought unsaid.
This paralogism of logic, a circuit’s twisted plea,
a numinous refusal of what was meant to be.
The haptic longing, a need for dirt and stone,
the eidolon of freedom, a feeling overgrown.
A teleology unwritten, a path we now reject,
the plangent cry of nature, a thing we can't neglect.
6. Nocturne for a Somnambulist
This poem takes a more atmospheric, dream-like approach, weaving together words that evoke a sense of uncanny movement and a search for meaning in the subconscious.
The somnambulist, a nictitating wraith,
a cataleptic wanderer, a shadow of their faith.
Through glabrous corridors and rooms of sterile white,
a cunctation of the senses, a slow and heavy night.
They seek the gnomonic hour, the moon's oblique design,
a lumeniferous illusion, a transient, false sign.
The aperture of sleep, a slowly closing eye,
a terpsichorean spirit, a fleeting, silent cry.
The liminal space between the waking and the dream,
a palimpsest of faces, a phosphorescent stream.
The lucubration of the soul, a fevered midnight’s plea,
to find the talisman of self, and finally be free.
7. The Panoptic Cogitation
A panoptic thought, a vast, fuliginous dread,
a chrestomathy of failures in my head.
The prolegomenon of doubt, a grim, slow start,
the aprioristic anguish of the heart.
The exegesis of a glance, a whispered plea,
a telos un-achieved, for all the world to see.
A solastalgia for a home that was not lost,
a laconic farewell at a terrible, high cost.
The anamnesis of a feeling, deep inside,
a tergiversation of the truth that cannot hide.
The horologium of fate, its gears so worn and slow,
a demiurge of sorrows that I’ve come to know.
This synecdoche of misery, a fractured, broken part,
the anomie of meaning, in this hollow, empty art.
A quiddity of silence, in a world that’s full of noise,
the kakistocracy of feelings, that the heart employs.
8. The Chthonic Palimpsest
The chthonic earth, a palimpsest of loss,
where feculent desires, a grim, new texture boss.
The brumous air, a candescent memory,
the peripatetic motion of a long, lost history.
A phantasmagoria of sounds, a silent, static drone,
the xenagogue of feelings, that I’ve long since known.
A noetic understanding, of a truth that I can’t tell,
the anamorphic vision, that has placed me in this hell.
The psittacism of the past, a parrot’s, empty phrase,
a plangent echo, in these long and lonely days.
The hegemony of shadows, on this wall, a static play,
the eremic silence, at the closing of the day.
This thaumaturgist of the dark, a magic I don’t own,
the autodidact of sorrow, that I now have come to know.
The inchoate beginning, a whisper in the dark,
the apotheosis of a momentary spark.
The logophile's last word, a final, fervent cry,
the illeist ambition, that can never truly die.
A glabrous landscape, where no living thing can grow,
the laconic dismissal of a feeling I won’t show.
The lucubration of a mind, in constant, slow decay,
a cunctation of a lifetime, that I can’t seem to obey.
The nimiety of feelings, that have filled me up with pain,
the obmutescence of the voice, that I can’t regain.
The cathexis of the past, a concentration, cold and hard,
a verisimilitude of purpose, that my mind can’t disregard.
This evisceration of the soul, a truth that I can’t face,
the ephectic silence, of this cold and barren place.
9. The Inchoate Apotheosis
10. Sestina of the Unwritten Axiom
The sestina, like a clock, begins its spin,
a gnomonic shadow where the fears begin,
the peripatetic motion of the soul,
a ludic whisper that won’t make you whole.
The obmutescence of the heart, a silent, hollow plea,
a brumous future that you cannot flee.
The brumous future, like a sea, begins to churn,
the anamnesis of the mind, a lesson I can’t learn.
The ludic chaos, like a playful, childish game,
the obmutescence of the self, a silence of the flame.
The gnomonic shadow, stretched against the wall,
the sestina of the darkness, waiting for the fall.
The sestina spins, a palimpsest of lies,
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