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[bitesizedpoetry]

André Malraux. Alex Michaelides. Jane Smiley. Horace Mann. Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Joseph Brodsky. James Baldwin. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Alphonse de Lamartine. Alfred De Musset. Isaac Asimov. Gustave Flaubert.

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A List of "Poetic" Words

to include in your next poem

Ambrosian: Anything particularly delightful to taste or smell.

Amort: Spiritless; lifeless.

Apollonian: Harmonious, measured, ordered or balanced in character.

Ariose: Characterized by melody; songlike.

Aureate: Golden, gilded, brilliant or splendid.

Caliginous: Misty, dim, murky, obscure or dark.

Gossamer: Something extremely light, flimsy, or delicate.

Halcyon: Calm, quiet, peaceful or undisturbed (usually accompanied by ‘days’).

Inveigle: To entice, lure, or ensnare by flattery or artful talk or inducements.

Mawkish: Sentimental in an exaggerated or false way.

Motley: Being of different colors combined.

Nebulous: Cloudy or cloudlike.

Panacea: A remedy for all disease or ills; cure-all.

Pellucid: Allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass; translucent.

Penumbra: A half-shadow, or the edge of a shadow.

Puerile: Of or pertaining to a child or to childhood.

Quiddity: The quality that makes a thing what it is; the essential nature of a thing.

Quintessential: The purest, most typical or refined example of its kind.

Scurrilous: Something coarse or indecent in the language it uses; or, as the early lexicographer Samuel Johnson put it: ‘using such language as only the licence of a buffoon can warrant’.

Seraphic: Blissfully serene; rapt.

Serendipity: When a happy and unexpected discovery occurs by accident.

Slattern: A woman or girl untidy or slovenly in person, habits and surroundings.

Sylphlike: A slender, graceful woman or girl. One of a race of supernatural beings supposed to inhabit the air.

Vellichor: Refers to the appealing mystique of an old bookshop.

Sanguinolency: Something bloody or something related to blood.

If any of these words make it into your next poem/s or stories, please tag me or leave a link in the replies. I would love to read them!

Sources: 1 2 3

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L. V., an excerpt from the piece, “The First Poem Ever Written” from the writing collection, monochrome me.

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The Son of Man René Magritte, 1946

Magritte painted The Son of Man as a self-portrait. The painting consists of a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat standing in front of a short wall, beyond which is the sea and a cloudy sky. The man's face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple. However, the man's eyes can be seen peeking over the edge of the apple. Another subtle feature is that the man's left arm appears to bend backward at the elbow.

About the painting, Magritte said: "At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present."

“One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I’d just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn’t have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples.”

— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

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Kahlil Gibran. Mark Twain. Christa Wolf. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. George Eliot. Jhumpa Lahiri. Sappho. Robert Burton. Victor Hugo. William Hope Hodgson. Mark Z. Danielewiski. H.G. Wells.

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L. V., an excerpt from the writing collection, “bored god.”

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Toni Morrison

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L. V., an excerpt from The Book of Strangers (pt. 1)

Allie H.: “…I lost him in 2006.” “…he told me about his favorite café. We promised to visit it together but that never happened…” “…he told me about the guy who made him the coffee…” “…he had a favorite seat in the corner by the window where he would spend hours studying while people watching…” “always bought an éclair early in the mornings when it was freshly made…” “I imagine conversations we could be having and sometimes I want to cry but I stop myself because I know people will stare.” “…If you love someone, don’t waste time. Get that coffee with them. Tell them you love them. You will never know when you will lose someone…”

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Anne Frank. Anne Sexton. Paulo Coelho. Rainer Maria Rilke. Emilie Autumn. Anne Frank. Pablo Neruda. Michel de Montaigne. George R. R. Martin. Stephen King. Henry David Thoreau. Gertrude Stein.

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L. V., an excerpt from The Book of Strangers (pt. 1)

Robin: "...I found your blog when you posted, “I want to be so awfully happy that I never need to write poetry again.” I am also a writer and that resonated with me. Whenever I am happy it becomes difficult for me to write..." "...they made me so happy that I stopped writing..." "...I prayed to all the gods I know just for us to get back together again..."

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“Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

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Rainer Maria Rilke

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L. V., “Prologue” from the poetry collection, I WANT TO BE SO AWFULLY HAPPY THAT I NEVER NEED TO WRITE POETRY AGAIN.

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A List of "Ugly" Words

to try to include in your next poem/story. This is a compilation of words mentioned in articles and polls I found online deemed "ugly" or "gross", or are the "most hated".

Bulbous - fat, round, or bulging.

Chunky - bulky and solid.

Curd - a soft, white substance formed when milk sours, used as the basis for cheese.

Engorge - cause to swell with blood, water, or another fluid.

Fester - to become septic; suppurate. To become rotten and offensive to the senses. To become worse or more intense, especially through long-term neglect or indifference.

Hurl - to throw (an object) with great force.

Lugubrious - looking or sounding sad and dismal.

Maggot - a soft-bodied legless larva, especially that of a fly found in decaying matter.

Moist - slightly wet; damp or humid.

Mucus - a slimy substance secreted by mucous membranes and glands for lubrication, protection, etc.

Ooze - to slowly trickle or seep out of something; flow in a very gradual way.

Phlegm - the thick viscous substance secreted by the mucous membranes of the respiratory passages, especially when produced in excessive or abnormal quantities.

Pus - a thick yellowish or greenish opaque liquid produced in infected tissue, consisting of dead white blood cells and bacteria with tissue debris and serum.

Putrid - decaying or rotting and emitting a fetid smell.

Seepage - the slow escape of a liquid or gas through porous material or small holes.

Slobber - have saliva dripping copiously from the mouth.

Slurp - to eat or drink (something) with a loud sloppy sucking noise.

Squelch - to make a soft sucking sound such as that made by walking heavily through mud.

Squirt - cause (a liquid) to be ejected from a small opening in a thin, fast stream or jet.

Yolk - the yellow internal part of a bird's egg, which is surrounded by the white, is rich in protein and fat, and nourishes the developing embryo.

If any of these words make it into your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

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A WRITING PROJECT: The Book of Strangers (pt. 1) is now available

A month ago, a phantom weight decided to make a home in my heart. For some reason, even writing couldn’t heal me this time around, so I asked strangers to tell me their story and I promised them a poetry/prose piece in return.

The concept of this writing collection involves a tea room. It involves strangers; another universe. Perhaps in this life, we won’t ever meet. But in another universe, we meet at the tea room where we aren’t strangers. You tell me your story as I make you a cup of tea. In this universe, I handweave poems and prose pieces using threads of your stories. In this universe, these written pieces are cups of tea I offer to you as my thanks for sharing your stories with me. I hope they help lift the phantom weight in your heart, even for just a moment.

A sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to this project. I have sent the link to you as well as those who have previously requested for it. If anyone else wants to read it, Send Me A Message. I will send you the link if: (i) you are following this blog; (ii) let me know what you think after reading it; and (iii) do NOT know me personally.

Also, if you sent your story anonymously, message me where I can send you the link.

I am currently working on Part 2, for those who submitted after the initial deadline. Submissions are open again for anyone else who would like to tell me their story in exchange for a poem/prose piece. Deadline for the second part is 17 May 2024. Tell me your story, dear strangers.

Tell me about the happiest version of yourself, your heartbreaks, the person you can’t stop thinking about, the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen, the day you realised you were right where you wanted to be, that moment in your life that you keep going back to in your head. Tell me about how it plays on a loop. About how you keep interpreting, reinterpreting, and misinterpreting all the things he said. About how you keep remembering and misremembering how she looked like in her favourite spring dress. Tell me what’s on your mind; what’s in your heart. The things you cannot tell anyone else. Tell me the things you desperately want to forget, but can’t.

- L. V., also a stranger confessing to strangers

[Photo: jeune fille à la tasse (girl with cup) by Léon François Comerre]

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Words related to Spring

to include in your next poem/story

Bloodroot -> a plant (Sanguinaria canadensis) of the poppy family having a red root and sap and bearing a solitary lobed leaf and white flower in early spring.

Bluebonnet -> either of two low-growing annual lupines (Lupinus subcarnosus or L. texensis) of Texas with silky foliage and blue flowers.

Coltsfoot -> a perennial composite herb (Tussilago farfara) with yellow flower heads appearing before the leaves.

Crocus -> any of a genus (Crocus) of herbs of the iris family developing from corms and having solitary long-tubed flowers and slender linear leaves.

Magnolia -> any of a genus (Magnolia of the family Magnoliaceae, the magnolia family) of American and Asian shrubs and trees with entire evergreen or deciduous leaves and usually showy white, yellow, rose, or purple flowers usually appearing in early spring.

Morel -> any of several edible fungi (genus Morchella, especially M. esculenta) having a conical cap with a highly pitted surface.

Mourning cloak -> a blackish-brown nymphalid butterfly (Nymphalis antiopa) that has a broad yellow border on the wings and is found in temperate parts of Europe, Asia, and North America.

Skunk cabbage -> any of several early-blooming perennial herbs of the arum family that occur in shaded, wet to swampy areas and have a fetid odor suggestive of a skunk.

Spring peeper -> a small brown tree frog (Pseudacris crucifer synonym Hyla crucifer) of the eastern U.S. and Canada that has a shrill piping call and breeds in ponds and streams in the spring. They are often just called peepers start singing on some of the earliest warm spring nights, ushering in the season with an evocative chorus. While they are highly successful in permanent ponds, they also utilize temporary, ephemeral ponds that appear briefly in the spring due to rain and snowmelt.

Tulip -> any of a genus (Tulipa) of Eurasian bulbous herbs of the lily family that have linear or broadly lanceolate leaves and are widely grown for their showy flowers.

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i think i'd love you even when i don't know you. the deathlessness of devotion, the poets call it.

unknown // The Elektra Complex, Joan Tierney // L. V. @literaryvein, an excerpt, “mimicking maelstroms.” // Sue Zhao // No one has taken anything away, Marina Tsvetaeva (trans. Elaine Feinstein) // unknown // The Drowned Children, Louise Gluck // unknown //Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments // only source i found was this pin // Courtney Peppernell, Pillow Thoughts (?)