universal resources

The poet has a vocabulary and experience enough for a universe.

large language models

Poets have been making use of AI LLMs for ages, just more slowly than racks of servers.

don't go there

Poet, don’t dare to call the clouds flocculent.

small change

He was a poet and so he could always dig into his pockets for a few more words.

world falls silent

No one really likes starlings.
For that reason alone, I continue
to savor them as they dip and dim
and vanish, taking with them
stemma, chrysalis, reticulate, telluric,
umbra, redolence, circumjacence,
and the verb perpend—each one
endangered, nearly extinct, desperate
for a mouth to roost in, for a tongue
that will relish the taste of its consonants
and vowels. What else might a word want?
A mind that respects what words mean.
Enough heart to know that within each
word left unsaid, a lost autochthonous
world falls silent. No assonance,
not even an echo. Each unused word an urn.

—Margaret Gibson, closing of the poem “Elegy, with Murmuration of Starlings,” Connecticut River Review, 2024

words you don't know yet

Many said [in the publishing world] that it was not a children's book. The vocabulary was much too difficult...

"But my feeling was that there is no such thing as a difficult word. There are only words you don't know yet,..."

—Norton Juster, quoted in his obit by Andrew Limbong

goes with the territory

I hardly know a poet who is not a logophile.

wordly love

A poet too much in love with her vocabulary.

well-stocked inventory

The poem was like entering a store filled floor to ceiling with racks of good words.

not entirely comfortable

The kind of word that looks a little worried sitting there in a line of poetry.

running short on everything

Stunted lines, stinted vocabulary.

the great explainer

“There are a few words and references in this poem you should know…” Please don't. If I was reading the poem on the page I'd have to experience it without your elucidations. If need be, I'm capable of going back through, using various resources available to me, and working out what may have gotten by me.

deficient text

The poem lacked vitamin V…vocabulary.

all the right words

The index of that book seemed like a word list for a great poem.

word stock

One of the many beneficent aspects of poetry: Learning new words.

dead end or avenue

People think that many poems are hard to read because of the vocabulary, proper names, lacunae, allusions, etc., things they don’t readily recognize. That’s not a difficulty, that’s an opportunity to explore new avenues of understanding.

nonce only

He had a knack for neologisms that made the existing word-stock seem ample.

time out to look up

Being driven to the dictionary by many words in a difficult poem proved to be a blessing, as it gave one time to mull over or to rest the mind, before beginning again.

new world everywhere you turn

To a poet every word is a wonder.

spare change

The poet always has one more word in his pocket.