“Nothing wakes up the brain like nonsense”
—Ted Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss  

We have worked hard to create clear images. Now we need to remember that although images as they appear in dreams are not always understandable through conventional logic, dream images can often appear clear and real but mysterious. Poetry needs a place for mystery. To that end, we will try a couple of exercises designed to—as the poet Rimbaud would have it—derange our senses. While we will continue to write poems with images, we hope to create poetic images reminiscent of dreams, familiar but unanalyzable.

 Word Deck Poems: Creating Dream Worlds with (mostly) Concrete Words 
thanks to Carol Lee Sanchez who showed me word-deck poems

After meeting Carol Lee Sanchez, the venerable grandmother of California Poets in the Schools, I was surprised to receive a gift of lessons from her. One of those lessons was how to create a personal universe word. This lesson not only worked in class, but it also helped me write "Fingertip Elegy," published in Homestead Review. Although "deranging our senses" might sound like a waste of time, "Fingertip Elegy" turned out to be an important poem for me, one I might not have written on my own.

Concrete Words: To help you develop images for your poems, we will construct a deck of words for each sense. Words that represent things that can be experienced with the senses are called “concrete words.” These words should name images to which you have a strong reaction. Some might be things you like, but others might be things that make you cringe or wince. Write down approximately 12 concrete words for each sense:          

                   sight: stones, oak trees, horses, ocean....

                   sound: wind, waves, singing, frogs croaking....

                   smell: kitchen, blossom, weeds, baby's skin....

                    touch: horse mane, stream bed sand, fur....

                    taste: garlic, pepper, walnuts, jalapeño....

Concrete words can be generated by asking the questions, "What do I like to see?  What interests me when I see it?  What gets my attention when I hear it?

 Action Verbs: The deck should also include 30 action verbs:

                    heed, shout, whisper, listen, overhear, eavesdrop....

                    see, look, glance, peep, stare, watch, sight-see....

                    taste, savor, spice, flavor....

                    touch, tickle, hit, graze, slam, bounce....

                    smell, perfume, stink, exhale, inhale....

 Adjectives: Three descriptive words. 

braided, brazen, rusted

Try to make sure that your descriptive words are more than variations on the nouns and verbs you listed for the first two groups. In other words, don't put "fiery" if you already have "fire."

Temporal Words: Four words that show time.

Wednesday, late October, midnight, summer

 Abstract Words: Finally the deck should include three abstract words, words that stand for ideas or emotions or states of being:

                    mercy, anarchy, fatigue

 Drafting a Poem

          Write each word on a small card so you have a deck of 100 word-cards. Spread the cards on a table—word-side up—and allow your eyes to glance over them. If a combination of words catches your interest, use those words in a line or verse. Be non-critical. Although the words “silence” and “distort” might not usually go together, “the distorted silence” might make an interesting auditory image in a poem.

          Use whatever linking words you need so the random words fall into standard syntax. Grammar will lend the randomly chosen words a kind of logic that can’t be denied although the overall images are surreal. Try for at least 12 lines.

           Suggested Techniques

·        Make one line an exclamation.

·        Use two questions.

·        Repeat a phrase three times. Invert the order of words if that helps.  

Our word deck takes significant fragments from our lives, and in our restructuring of those fragments, we often discover what is personally evocative. For student examples of word-deck poems, see "Saxofóno Rojo," Lemon Cab," "Piano Lightning," or "Gossip."