Artistic Tips: Word Selection

Last week I talked about the basic structure of a poem (meter) and how it's not as important to follow those rules. This week I want to talk about the most obvious and important thing about poetry: words.  You can't have poetry without words, but you can have words without it being poetry. The structural difference is poetry consists of rhythm, meter, and rhyme while prose for the most part does not. The difference is in format, but they both require proper word selection. Prose is limited by the audience of what words are appropriate and recognizable. In an ethics paper, you probably wouldn't debate the economic benefits of distributing mass quantities of two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to a single oxygen atom to the needy. In poetry you can. Well, maybe not exactly like in that example. Poetry uses considerably fewer words than prose which means every word should be carefully considered. This is where a thesaurus comes in handy.

You don't just want to find the right word, you want to find the best word. You want words that can have multiple meanings or certain connotations And then you want those words to be in synch with the words around them. You want them to either compliment each other (easily done with alliteration) or contrast each other to make them stand out or make people do a double take (like seemingly oxymoronic phrases). You want words that you can repeat and that can have a slightly or drastic different meaning depending on the words around it. Most importantly you want to be clever. You want to come up with a new or different take on how words are usually used, something that makes it uniquely yours. From there you can build your metaphors, and of course you should use puns and other poetic literally devices which I'll explore more in another poem, but if you want a head start on those, there's a link under Poetry Resources labeled Literary Devices.

So now I'm going to go through and highlight some of the word choices I made in this poem.
Hopefully it will be clearer than diagramming last week's poem meter by syllables.


"What the F*ck Is This Sex You Speak Of?"

I'll talk about language in my video for tomorrow, but I did censor myself here to slightly less offend people. And I do use it sparingly (only once in the title and once in the poem) and only as a sort of pun. It's an expletive with a literal definition that is appropriate for the topic. 

I think girls are pretty and guys are hot,
But I don't really think about sex a lot.
Sure I had crushes on girls and guys,
But girlfriends and boyfriends felt like lies.

I'm purposefully consistent at being inconsistent by stanza of the order in which I list girls and guys. The order really doesn't matter, but I wanted you to be in a pattern and then break that pattern and then flip it back to demonstrate my feelings of not being sure. And then with pretty hot, well there's that, but this word selection was influenced by necessary rhyme and connotation. Pretty rhymes with really and hot rhymes with lot. I would have liked to used cute instead of hot because hot tends to have a subtle or not so subtle sexual connotation and I wanted it to be strictly not-sexual.  And a pretty boy is not the same as a pretty girl so that's why girls go before guys in this case. Gender roles and stereotypes is a whole other issue.

The straight default just felt straight up wrong.
I felt I had to hide the alternative gay behind genderless love songs.
So I didn't know if I was gay or straight or something in between.
I didn't even know what sex was. No one really tells us when we're teens.
It's this abstract concept that's suppose to be so great.
But they except us to wait.
To wait for a life time to pass us by,
Before we get to awkwardly try.

Straight is almost a painfully obvious pun, but I don't care. I love it. Alternative is well, if you're not straight then the alternative is being gay (which is a false binary system which I'll explain in a video later this week), but in some Christian circles "choosing" to be gay is called living an "alternative lifestyle" for those who are too afraid of getting infected by the very word or think it's like saying "he who must not be named."  And that leads me into the religious aspect of this poem. I am not heterosexual and I am a Christian, and although to some that might seem like an oxymoron or something, I am in fact both at the same time. And they both influence my worldview and what I write tends to be a reflection of everything that I am. So keep abstract concept and wait in mind for the last stanza, but for now wait is a fun pun (maybe not exactly a pun). Wait means to stay or delay and the end of the line and the beginning of the next are delaying you with wait again.

Sex is placed up there with drugs and drinks.
Things that alter and inhibit our ability to think.
If virginity is sacred, then losing it is either taboo
Or something only the cool kids get to do.

You place thing up on an altar to sacrifice them in a sacred ritual. But what we're actually doing in society is taking sex down from the altar and putting it with things that are commonly viewed as inherently "trashy" or bad. I'll talk more about this and my opinion in either the Soul or Therapy section. (But there's a little tiny glimpse of shape poems with the sort of descending steps.) And cool leads into the next stanza.

Sexy is cool. Sexy is intimacy. But I'm cool with just a high five.
Sex is money. Sex sells cars. But I don't really want to drive.
I still have crushes on guys and girls.
But that's as far as it goes in my world.
I wouldn't say no to a boyfriend or a girlfriend,
Since I could still fall in love for the first time or again.

Three definition of cool: used to express acceptance; fashionably attractive; excellent. Physical intimacy is suppose to be attractive, but I'm just fine or "excellent" with minimal physical contact. This bold and italicized line reflects back to the similar one in the first stanza. I go from past tense to present tense saying that I haven't really changed, yet I change the order of guys and girls. So something has changed without me realizing it, but it's really just a change of perspective. I, myself, have not changed. I don't want to drive is a play on the phrase sex drive which I don't really have and the fact that in real life I don't know how to drive nor do I want to. I love am content with the MTA and the NYC subway system. And again was another forced selection for a rhyme, but it fits to emphasize that it could potentially happen more than once and that I could change in the future.

So what the f*ck is sex? It took me a while to figure out, and I’m clever.
Sex is something I don’t want. Not now and maybe not ever.

It’s more than just sexual abstinence.

There’s no sexual attraction, not an ounce.
Maybe some day there will be.
I’m not 100% committed to celibacy.
And whether it be a woman or a man,
I’ll be ready if I know it’s God’s plan.

Wait no longer, that abstract concept was hinting at abstinence. It's alliteration that's a long ways a way but maybe it was close enough in your mind like it was in mine. Not an ounce and not 100% are both not absolute values that mean almost absolutely nothing. Not on ounce doesn't necessarily mean zero. Half an ounce is not an ounce, and two ounces is also not an ounce. It's just to get you thinking in the same ballpark without 100% committing to a measurement.

So as you can see there's a lot behind the words selected in poetry, not to say that there's isn't a lot to say behind in prose writing, but I hope you can see the difference in at least planning/purpose. So as always please feel free to contact me with any questions in the comments below or in my connect info under the tab About the Poet at the top of the blog.