unlikely impetus

Look to the verbiage of signs, menus, instruction manuals, ingredient labels, fabric tags, etc.— any odd text that may be the impetus for a poem.

predictable results

The use of unusual and novel poetic forms will produce obscure and ignorable poems.

cruel and unusual

But for the law against cruel and unusual punishment, I’m sure many prison libraries would love to own this book of poems.

passing strange

The attraction of the poem was that it could not be immediately recognized as such.