“And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.” Pablo Neruda
“COLLECT WORDS! Buy your own dictionary. Read your dictionary every
day. CIRCLE exciting words. The more words you know, the better you
will be able to express yourself, your thoughts.” Gwendolyn Brooks
Bumptious. Scrumptious. Resplendent. Gobsmacked. Aura. There are
legions of words ripe for the plucking and the page — and the more of
them we gather to ourselves, the richer the language we have to share
with our readers.
In her wonderful guide, Writing Toward Home, Georgia Heard suggests
keeping a notebook and filling it with words you love . “Listen to
words spoken around you,” she advises, “write down words from menus,
signs, books, newspapers — the more you become aware of the words
possible to you, the more abundant your writing will become.”
And to inspire us all, here are some beautiful words about words from
the joyful poet Pablo Neruda:
“It’s the words that sing, they soar and descend…I bow to them…I love
them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them
down…I love words so much…The unexpected ones…The ones I wait for
greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop…Vowels I love…They
glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are
foam, thread, metal, dew…I run after certain words…They are so
beautiful that I want to fit them all in my poem…I catch them in
mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I
set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to
me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily like fruit, like algae, like
agates, like olives…And then, I stir them, I shake them, I drink them,
I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go…I leave
them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like
coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves…Everything
exists in the word.”
Let’s all catch words “in mid-flight, as they buzz past,” and write on!
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