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Monday, January 23, 2006

Overused Words

What do you suppose are the five most overused words in poetry today?

7 comments:

alcholic poet said...

love, soul, heart, shadow and pain.

what do you think?

cool site. we should link up to each other.

Michael A. Wells said...

Those are certainly overdone - and quite frankly words that likely should be avoided altogether. Especially love and pain.

I mean if the touches on love or pain, show it to me so I see it, feel it and touch it or it touches me, but don't give me those words.

Five that come to my mind:

fragile
salient
majestic
eternal
solitude

I admit I am guilty of using solitude.

Lucindyl said...

Do you think it might depend on what kind of poetry and the poets one tends to read? I don't recall seeing "salient" in any of the things I read regularly (or semi-regularly), but I don't doubt that it's overused somewhere by someone (or a loose group of someones).

Cindy's opinion, just for the record: "solitude" would be a lesser sin compared to the others. :) As a noun, it leans a little more toward the concrete, at least. (And besides, it a good word, especially if it's got lots of sensory words packed around it!)

Christine E. Hamm, Poet Professor Painter said...

dark, moon, O' (as in an exclamation) -- O' dark moon!
also, thee and thou, snow white or white as snow

Michael A. Wells said...

Cindy - LOL, I feel much better now. Hey, I tend to write on the darker edge so solitude comes easy.

Christine - O' what can I say, you said it all. :)

Actually, I was talking to someone the other day who said they heard from some other source that every poet should be restricted to two uses of "O'" in poetry in their whole lifetime. Lot of em are gonna go dry pretty fast.

Catnapping said...

dark, moon, love, are some that come to mind, (all of which i've used.

I've seen angst an awful, too.

Solitude? Damn, I've got a draft of a poem with that word in it...

Lucindyl said...

I'd be interested in hearing which words each person has to be careful of overusing. Some of my personal watch-it's: spill, pour, light, singing...