wild encounter

I’ll pay attention when I’m startled by a poem of yours that I've encountered in the wild.

tepid praise

I’m mildly interested in that kind of poetry, but not wildly.

mischievous poetry

Give praise with children
           chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
Living wild on the streets through generations
           of children.

—Anne Porter, from “A List of Praises,” An Altogether Different Language: Poems 1934-1994 (Zoland Books, 1994)

not domesticated

She respected words, treating them like they were wild animals.

essential reins

Imagination, like wild horses, pulls hard and fast under the reins of reality.

scale counts

There are wild, unwieldy poems that can survive many ill locutions, and then there are seemingly perfect poems that fail because of one wrong word.

party crashers

The poem was a wild party of words, where you imagined some words were eyeing one another, thinking how did he/she get in here.

wild draft

Not only a rough draft, but one that was rugged and wild.