Choosing the Right Word (Journal 4)

“I do not choose the right word.  I get rid of the wrong one.”  ~A. E. Housman

On the granite bar in my kitchen I keep a magnetic poetry board.  It's a great conversation piece, and it's an interesting boredom buster while I'm waiting for water to boil or the oven to preheat.  The thing with magnetic poetry, though, is that you're limited to the pool of words on the magnets.  No matter how extensive a vocabulary you have, there are words that are forbidden.  Thus, it comes down to choosing the “best” word, rather than the “right” word. 

The poem I wrote the other day, then, is a collection of “best” words, some of which would be “wrong” and which I might replace if I weren't working with a limited pool of pre-selected words.  Even so, though, there are still a lot of words I got rid of or chose not to lose as I was “writing” on that magnet board.

Summer sun, playful beside soil and stream -

wet scent across a poet's ear

orange sound at blossom time

cool murmurs urge: hear the color

dizzy taste as when a sea stone speaks

feel mud over tingly skin and under dirty sky

brilliant river dripping through immense vein

a solitary angel dances to storm music

black rhythm of rain & puddle

wicked night voice of moon and ricochet

ecstatic roar

In this poem I tried playing with synesthesia as a device, one I wouldn't normally choose to work with, but which I was sort of forced into experimenting with because of the words I had (and didn't have) at my disposal.  The poem starts in sunlight and ends in storm and darkness, an interesting passage of time that I might not have entertained otherwise.  I discarded a lot of pre-printed words on those little magnets; there are still a puddle of them left in the tray.  In thinking about Housman's words, though, I wonder how much of getting rid of the wrong word happens automatically as we leave any number of words behind in the tray, so to speak.