Poet Tina Kelley seems fascinated with words, unusual often obscure words. Have you met an aeolist (a person who claims to be inspired), or been blessed by one? Have you experienced a diapause (a period of suspended development? Have you discovered that you might, at least on occasion, be a prosopagnosic (one who suffers face blindness), or that you can practice steganography (a form of writing that obscures, like invisible ink)?
In Field Guide to Noth American Words, Kelley takes those unusual words and others and creates poems, poems that are not obscure or unusual, vivid poems about life, birthdays, aging, hacked passwords, birthdays, the future (as seen through birds), an old doll in an attic, all those rooms that the hallways of unusual words can lead you to. Like any proper field guide, the words are arranged alphabetically.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
Words – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.
The Beachy Poem Challenge – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Here in This Room – poem by Larua Wifler at Rabbit Room Poetry.
The Land of Childhood – poem by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell at Every Day Poems.
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” poem by John Donne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
1 comment:
I love the idea of turning a dictionary into poetry. It proves that even the strangest words can carry very human emotions when they're in the right hands. Now I'm curious to hunt down a few obscure words and see what kind of stories they inspire. Also, while I was browsing for interesting literary discoveries, I stumbled across https://spino-gambino.it.com/—always fun to mix books with a little unexpected internet wandering.
Post a Comment