Book of Words

My note book is a testament
to bitten nails, ragged and rent,
and heretic bleed of cuticles
not neatly trimmed and beautiful
but ripped, picked and gnawed
while searching for the perfect word,
the one that shines with serendipity,
arriving as an epiphany
and written down to be used
in stories, poems and reviews.

Kim M. Russell, 2017

Book of Words
Just a few of my favourite notebooks!

My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Words Count with Mama Zen and linked to dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.

Mama Zen tells us that, for a creative writing class, her offspring had to create a book of favourite words.  She says she stole a few of them to include in a list for this poetry prompt.

Our Assignment is to choose three words from the list and compose a little bit of brilliance of no more than sixty words. Bonus points for a poem with the title ‘Book of Words’. I chose: testament, heretic and serendipity.

57 thoughts on “Book of Words”

  12. My nails are unchewed but certainly the dictionary gets a hammering when searching for the words that illustrate one’s feelings. Your poem progresses well from angst to satisfaction to relax the reader at the end.

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    1. Thank you, Jane. I’m trying hard to leave my nails alone. The lovely girl who gives my hands a paraffin treatment, which eases arthritis, does my nails too, to encourage me. It seems to work. 🙂

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  27. Such an accurate description of a poet’s notebook. I have recently realized that the poet’s job is not so much to FIND the right word as to wrestle and even fight with language until the poet and poem have both affected each other to change both the writer and the written your poem seems to be testament to that.

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