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Accent.
Adjective:
That skims the lips of many adjectives - Maxwell Bodenheim "Portraits. II: Waitress"
You are an unspeakable adjective - Alfred Kreymborg "Poetry"
Adverb:
Adverbs from the leaf-talk of the elves - Stephen Vincent Benet "Talk"
Alphabet.
Ampersand:
Ampersands of storage compounds - Brenda Hillman "To Mycorrhizae Under Our Mother's Garden"
Form & light, extra space in the ampersand - Brenda Hillman "Unendangered Moths of the Mid-Twentieth Century"
Annotate:
Spiders in ceremony annotating the windows - Zaina Alsous "On having begun"
Tombs of silence in an annotated landscape - Veronica Zondek "cold fire 13" transl. by Katherine Silver
Claw marks annotate awakening - Ann K. Schwader "Cave Bear Dreams"
Antecedent:
The motive antecedent to the act - Thomas M. Disch "The Clouds"
Had no antecedents for doubt - Fanny Wheeler Hart "Harry: Part 1"
an antecedent of many things - Tajudeen Muadh "In a Goverment Class, I Discuss My Home"
Apostrophe:
Turning away inside the apostrophe - Aditi Machado "Experiment with Aspic"
Article:
Deserving of the definite article - Sean Hill "Hello"
Definite article of the body - Christopher Kondrich "Definite Article"
Articles of their own impermanence - Thomas Lynch "Lessons from Berkeley"
Articulate/Inarticulate.
Asterisk:
Asterisk of the sun, hyphen of the moon - Faylita Hicks "Coded Binaries"
Braille:
braille on silken canvas - Tahnia Barrie "I Am Scabs, One and Legion"
I learned to read the braille of mighty screams - Harry Martinson "Aniara 49: The Blind Woman" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg
Calligraphy.
Chapter:
Giving back a scattered chapter - Hart Crane "At Melville's Tomb"
The next chapter in my book of transformations - Stanley Kunitz "The Layers"
A final chapter no one reads - Frank O'Hara "Meditations in an Emergency"
Remember how light dawned in chapters - Kiki Petrosino "Happiness"
Character.
Cipher/Cypher.
Clause:
Hide between clauses and commas - Brandy Nālani McDougall "On Finding My Father's First Essay"
A conditional clause hanging from something to do with spring - Noah Warren "Cut Lilies"
Cliche:
a well of intentions and cliche - Ruth Ellen Kocher "She Manifests Her Own Ineffable"
An example of cliché so profuse it touched my heart - David St. John "The Park"
Code.
Comma:
Hide between clauses and commas - Brandy Nālani McDougall "On Finding My Father's First Essay"
Expose a spine of cursed commas - Nicholas Wong "On Insertion"
Comment:
Riding the waves without comment - Duane Ackerson "Various Horses"
The stars in secret influence comment - William Shakespeare "Sonnet XV"
Commentaries on borrowing practices - Eunsong Kim "Disclaimers for Debt"
Conjugation:
The roiling sea of vowels, conjugations, tenses - Usha Akella "Breaking bread with phonemes"
Fit for the conjugation of joy - Meena Alexander "Darling Coffee"
Conjugating the squandered night - Shara McCallum "A Grammar for War"
The conjugation of the paramecium - Muriel Rukeyser "The Conjugation of the Paramecium"
Conjunction:
Whose courses and conjunctions govern us - Dana Gioia "Psalm of the Heights"
The sweet conjunctions that astonish us - Conrad Hilberry "Zero"
The Conjunction of the Mind - Andrew Marvell "The Definition of Love"
From landscape to unsuppressed conjunction - Charles Wright "Homage to What's-His-Name"
Connote:
Used to connote a blank space - Mary Jo Bang "Speech Is Designed to Persuade"
Context.
Contradiction.
Countersign:
To solve the doubt, watchword and countersign - John G. Nicolay, Private Secretary to President Lincoln "On Guard" [The Continental Monthly v.II no.VI, Dec. 1862]
She passes with her perfect countersign - Leonora Speyer "April on the Battlefields"
Creole:
a pidgin picking its way into a creole - Malcolm Friend "Caliban Theory"
Cuneiform:
A maze of cuneiform streets - Sandy Florian "Our Big City"
Curse.
Cursive.
Decipher.
Denote:
Ashes denote that fire was - Emily Dickinson "Book 3: Life XXX: Fire"
Describe.
Dialect.
Dialectic:
Dark's velvet dialectic - Adrienne Rich "Rusted Legacy"
Dialogue:
Threadbare as a dialogue assumed - Edwin Torres "E.G. as I.E."
Fit his tongue to dialogues of business, love, or strife - William Wordsworth "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"
Dictionary.
Digit/Digital.
Ellipsis:
The verbed streetlights make ellipsis - Adrian Matejka "16 Bars Poetica"
Eloquence.
Epithet:
An angry epithet baring its teeth - Mouna Ammar "1 Zmagria Place"
Etymology:
The etymology of necessity - Rae Gouirand "Quince Suite"
Look up the etymology of melancholia - Amie Whittemore "Lunar Eclipse"
Etymon:
Who will reconstruct the etymon of hunger - Giorgiomaria Cornelio "La consegna delle braci [The Distribution of Embers]" transl. by Moira Egan
Euphemism:
Never meant to live in euphemism - Randall Mann "Realtor"
Falsehood.
Figurative:
Figurative dreams that now haunt us - Paisley Rekdal "Philip Larkin's Koan"
Fluent.
Glossary:
Their glossary of knocks - Traci Brimhall "Aubade on a Ghost Hunt"
While these trees held a glossary of stars - Dorianne Laux "Redwoods"
Glyph.
Grammar.
Handwriting:
Who know my left-handed handwriting - Danni Quintos "Quintos"
Hashtag:
Hashtags of interiority - Becca Klaver "Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie"
Hieroglyph.
Hyperbole:
Metaphoric explosion and grotesque hyperbole - Bruce Boston "Surreal People"
Hyphen:
Asterisk of the sun, hyphen of the moon - Faylita Hicks "Coded Binaries"
Iambic:
My rib cage expanding and contracting in iambics - Daisy Aldan "Everywhere in Constancy, He Is Intoning, Look! Look!"
Its iambic pulse of light - Jamaal May "Better Devices"
Iconography:
That radiates iconographic images - Bruce Boston & Robert Frazier "A Compass for the Mutant Rain Forest"
Of administrative iconography - Michael Leong "from Transmitting the Vertical Immensity of Coniferous Light"
Ideogram:
Between ideograms depicting darkness - Christopher Kondrich "Layer of Ash"
Idiom:
Strain'd with many strange idioms - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto II"
To ask for a crystalline idiom - Prageeta Sharma "The Imperishable and Perishable Family"
Illegible:
I am trying to become illegible - Igor Gulin "Kontur" transl. by Your Language My Ear
Blurs to illegible serenity - Robert Pinsky "The Great Nauset Buddha"
On Memory's page inscribed in letters large and legible - Sylvester "The Dream" [Southern Literary Messenger v.II no.1 Dec. 1835-6]
Index.
Inscribe.
Insult.
Interpret.
Inuendo/Innuendo:
Innuendoes of your inverse dawn - Mina Loy "Moreover, the Moon--"
Pink inuendoes hooded in gray - Lola Ridge "Manhattan Lights"
Invective:
Invectives of the wind - Harold Acton "Ventilation"
Irony.
Jargon:
The jargon of the howling main - Lewis Carroll "The Three Voices: The Third Voice"
No blackbird bates his jargoning - Emily Dickinson "Book 1: Nature XX: Two Worlds"
The jargon of engines quiet - Lola Ridge "The Everlasting Return"
Loud-spoken in the jargon of the day - Iris Tree "[Among the crumbling arches of decay]"
Jest/Jester.
Jibe:
Now all vanishes in plots and gibes - Stephen Vincent Benet "The Last Banquet"
To cast his jibes and scoffs - Cardinal John Henry Newman "The Dream of Gerontius"
How they jibe at loss - William Carlos Williams "Hic Jacet"
Koan:
Speak to the same want of nature's koan - Michael Meyerhofer "Theodote"
Label:
Our yellowed labels all spell doom - Boris Dralyuk "Emigre Library"
Moral machinery is not labelled - Marianne Moore "Reinforcements"
A false prophet robed in attitude and labels - Emanuel Xavier "Legendary"
Language.
Letter.
Lexicon:
A lexicon of crimes they do in my name - Tania Chen "A Toast from Santisima Muerte"
The lexicon of wilds goes on - RK Fauth "Playing with Bees"
In order to enter a new lexicon - Mary Hickman "Helen"
Liar.
Lie/Lying.
Linguistics:
A linguist more learned than Father Wisdom - Alfred Kreymborg "Old Manuscript"
Lowercase:
Allowing lowercase sand to spill from me - Christopher Kondrich "Ruin Valley"
Mantra:
My lips' chapped mantra of mud - Vandana Khanna "Parvati Tires of Waiting"
Bone marrow and unsung mantras - Fiona Lu "Turing Test"
To pour his mantras on our heads - Surdas "Sur's Ocean 175: The Bee Messenger" transl. by John Stratton Hawley
Hear the mantra of the mouse-god sounding - Catherynne M. Valente "Mouse Koan"
Maxim:
All those thousand good maxims we coin - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto I"
A maxim among the wise established - Euripedes "Helen" transl. by Michael Wodhull
Message.
Metaphor.
Monogram:
Mercury monogrammed with fever - Cynthia Zarin "Orbit"
Monologue:
Dreams down its cadenced monologues - Stephane Mallarme "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" (translated by Aldous Huxley)
Hello in a moebius monologue - Sandra McPherson "Driving in Circles with the Blind"
Morse Code:
Machine-guns, tapping a code in Morse - E.W. Hornung "The Ballad of Ensign Joy"
Tapping out my Morse-code alphabet - Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris "woodpecker"
Motif:
A mirror with a feather motif - Mary Jo Bang "Given to Believe"
The sounding motif of my heart, the impetus and goal - Georgia Douglas Johnson "Proving" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]
Motto:
Nailed it as a motto above my door - Arthur Davison Ficke "Ten Grotesques: II. The Prudent Lover"
The motto of modern-day dowsers - Thomas Lux "Indigo Felix:"
Newsprint:
Swaddled in old newsprint and hope - Toby MacNutt "When You Read this Debris"
Nomenclature:
Our flesh a nomenclature of memories - Jacie Ragan "The Secret Lives of Fingerprints"
A cotton-cloud nomenclature for crusade - Leslie Contreras Schwartz "A Body's Universe of Big Bangs"
Noun:
A verb named for its noun - Dan Chiasson "Bloom (II)"
What happens between the noun and the verb - Rodney Jones "The Language of Love"
Every verb desires to be a noun - Kate Light "There Comes the Strangest Moment"
Smug nouns of dominion - Gregory Orr "Eden and After: To Notice"
Number/Outnumber.
Potential Titles: Numbers [category].
Paragraph:
The great paragraphs of dust - Major Jackson "On Disappearing"
Reading far past the last paragraph into the back blank page - Dean Young "Colophon"
Paraphrase:
The early dark is a paraphrase of Mars - Chen Chen "Night Falls Like a Button"
How ego blossoms in paraphrase - J.P. Grasser "time bending / tongue / entwine / the betwixt"
An exquisite corpse paraphrased - Adrian Matejka "16 Bars Poetica"
Parenthesis.
Parse.
Password:
The password of the leaves upon the cottonwood - Alexander Posey "To Wahilla Enhotulle"
Period.
Phoneme:
A phoneme that will stubbornly assert itself - Usha Akella "Breaking bread with phonemes"
Pidgin:
a pidgin picking its way into a creole - Malcolm Friend "Caliban Theory"
Platitude:
Exchanging vows and other platitudes - Natalie Clifford Barney "Habit"
Teetering into platitudes - Diane Seuss "Poetry"
Pledge.
Plural:
History woven from the plural - Christopher Kondrich "Peace Epic"
The plural pavilion of sardines - Pablo Neruda "Migration" transl. by Jack Schmitt
Post-Script:
The post-script at the end of her letter - Waitman Barbe "The Fly Leaf"
Print.
Prose:
Hard prose by daylight - James Russell Lowell "Agassiz"
Proverb.
Punctuate.
Question Mark:
Curled in an inverse question mark of concentration - Mike Allen "The Journey to Kailash"
Lifted away all the question marks - Victoria Chang "The Trees Witness Everything"
Question mark of candles - Gabrielle Civil "19th Birthday in Paris"
Quote:
Quote each stuttered word - Sarah Titus "The Angels Sip Manhattans Wearing the Faces of Our Dead"
Read
Rhyme.
Riddle.
Runes.
Salutation:
Salutation from a guilty mouth - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "A Drama of Exile"
Scrawl.
Scribble.
Scribe:
Let the scribe murder the poet in the man - Sam Walter Foss "The Wail of the Hack Writer" [The Fly Leaf, v.1 no.2, Jan. 1896]
Scribe intentions on the dark - Kevin Goodan "Spot Weather Forecast"
That for a warrior sends a scribe - Edward S. Steele "Armenia Immolata"
Fail to scribe care onto my body - Elizabeth Theriot "Self-Portrait as Self-Care Mantra" [Sugar House Review issue 22, 2021]
Script.
Sentence.
Sigil:
leaving sigils in lipstick on the bathroom mirrors - Amanda Gafford "Tigerlily"
The unending impulse to form a sigil in the sand - Angel Leal "The Witch Recalls Her Craft"
Torn sigils tangled in bones on the lawn - L.D. Lewis "Young Death Is in Love"
Sigma:
The sigmas and taus of constellations - Robert Frost "I Will Sing You One-O"
Sign.
Signal.
Signature.
Simile:
Nothing like our similes - Basho transl. by David Young
I can write similes of serenity & poetic sermons - Regie Cabico "Morning After the Election"
Slang:
my dark surrealism written in slang - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "Bleeding The Calf"
the evisceration of slang on altars made unkind - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "To Stand Down (And To Stand By)"
Slogan:
Slogans and bands and banners - Helen Hoyt "Cheap"
Speak/Spoke.
Speech.
Statement.
Stenography:
Petty stenographers of the crooked rulers - Ammiel Alcalay "My Apologies"
Stop Sign:
sliding through the stop signs - Charles Coleman Finlay "Accidental Series"
Subject.
Subtext:
In the subtext called our lives - Eunsong Kim "On Endings & Longing"
Summary:
Summarize the past by theft and allusion - Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Americus, Book I [excerpt]"
Superscript:
Superscription of bent foam and wave - Hart Crane "Voyages II"
Syllable.
Symbol.
Synonym.
Syntax.
Tag.
Tau:
The sigmas and taus of constellations - Robert Frost "I Will Sing You One-O"
Term.
Terminology:
Sealed by terminology's lacquer - Diane Ackerman "Letter to Dr. B--"
Text.
Thesaurus:
The peacock feather in the open thesaurus - Mukut Borpujari "Stoic"
The color of an ancient thesaurus - Catherine Bowman "Pears"
Take refuge in the deep Thesaurus - Oliver Herford "The Fairy Godmother-in-Law IV: The Ball"
Title:
Their titles to true immortality - Tommaso Campanella "XXXI. To Poland" transl. by John Addington Symonds
As due by many titles - John Donne "Sonnet"
When distinguished among the citizens by sounding titles - Euripedes "Hecuba" transl. by Michael Wodhull
Prove title to your heirship - James Russell Lowell "The Heritage"
The title which those silver tones assigned - P. "Sonnet on My Little Boy's First Trying to Say 'Pa-pa' [Chambers' Edinburgh Journal no.443 June 26, 1852]
Translate.
Translation.
Type.
V [letter]:
Mysteriously enlisted in a V formation of Canadian geese - Duane Ackerson "Three Urban Legends"
Verb.
Vernacular:
In the vernacular of lavender and heather - Richard Blanco "Listening at Reading Farm, an Elegy"
They wear masks and vernacular - Gabriel Ramirez "Learn Your Song"
Vocabulary.
Vowel.
Watchword:
Will be a watchword and a battle hymn - Frank Davis Ashburn "Sonnet [Poor Lucy never laughed much after that]"
The deep watchword of the rushing storm - S. Virginia French "The 'Still Small Voice'"
To solve the doubt, watchword and countersign - John G. Nicolay, Private Secretary to President Lincoln "On Guard" [The Continental Monthly v.II no.VI, Dec. 1862]
The watchword there is Rest - Miriam Clark Potter "Twilight Town"
Word.
Write.
X [letter]:
The accident of understanding what it means to be X - Oliver de la Paz "Solve for X"
Didn't believe an x could equal a y - Thomas Lux "Nullius in Verba (Take Nobody's Word for It)"
XYZs:
In the xyzs of nights and days - Deborah Landau "Ecstasies"
Y [letter]:
Didn't believe an x could equal a y - Thomas Lux "Nullius in Verba (Take Nobody's Word for It)"
Navigation Links:
Go to author indices.
Go to word indices.
Go to category indices.
Adjective:
That skims the lips of many adjectives - Maxwell Bodenheim "Portraits. II: Waitress"
You are an unspeakable adjective - Alfred Kreymborg "Poetry"
Adverb:
Adverbs from the leaf-talk of the elves - Stephen Vincent Benet "Talk"
Alphabet.
Ampersand:
Ampersands of storage compounds - Brenda Hillman "To Mycorrhizae Under Our Mother's Garden"
Form & light, extra space in the ampersand - Brenda Hillman "Unendangered Moths of the Mid-Twentieth Century"
Annotate:
Spiders in ceremony annotating the windows - Zaina Alsous "On having begun"
Tombs of silence in an annotated landscape - Veronica Zondek "cold fire 13" transl. by Katherine Silver
Claw marks annotate awakening - Ann K. Schwader "Cave Bear Dreams"
Antecedent:
The motive antecedent to the act - Thomas M. Disch "The Clouds"
Had no antecedents for doubt - Fanny Wheeler Hart "Harry: Part 1"
an antecedent of many things - Tajudeen Muadh "In a Goverment Class, I Discuss My Home"
Apostrophe:
Turning away inside the apostrophe - Aditi Machado "Experiment with Aspic"
Article:
Deserving of the definite article - Sean Hill "Hello"
Definite article of the body - Christopher Kondrich "Definite Article"
Articles of their own impermanence - Thomas Lynch "Lessons from Berkeley"
Articulate/Inarticulate.
Asterisk:
Asterisk of the sun, hyphen of the moon - Faylita Hicks "Coded Binaries"
Braille:
braille on silken canvas - Tahnia Barrie "I Am Scabs, One and Legion"
I learned to read the braille of mighty screams - Harry Martinson "Aniara 49: The Blind Woman" transl. by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg
Calligraphy.
Chapter:
Giving back a scattered chapter - Hart Crane "At Melville's Tomb"
The next chapter in my book of transformations - Stanley Kunitz "The Layers"
A final chapter no one reads - Frank O'Hara "Meditations in an Emergency"
Remember how light dawned in chapters - Kiki Petrosino "Happiness"
Character.
Cipher/Cypher.
Clause:
Hide between clauses and commas - Brandy Nālani McDougall "On Finding My Father's First Essay"
A conditional clause hanging from something to do with spring - Noah Warren "Cut Lilies"
Cliche:
a well of intentions and cliche - Ruth Ellen Kocher "She Manifests Her Own Ineffable"
An example of cliché so profuse it touched my heart - David St. John "The Park"
Code.
Comma:
Hide between clauses and commas - Brandy Nālani McDougall "On Finding My Father's First Essay"
Expose a spine of cursed commas - Nicholas Wong "On Insertion"
Comment:
Riding the waves without comment - Duane Ackerson "Various Horses"
The stars in secret influence comment - William Shakespeare "Sonnet XV"
Commentaries on borrowing practices - Eunsong Kim "Disclaimers for Debt"
Conjugation:
The roiling sea of vowels, conjugations, tenses - Usha Akella "Breaking bread with phonemes"
Fit for the conjugation of joy - Meena Alexander "Darling Coffee"
Conjugating the squandered night - Shara McCallum "A Grammar for War"
The conjugation of the paramecium - Muriel Rukeyser "The Conjugation of the Paramecium"
Conjunction:
Whose courses and conjunctions govern us - Dana Gioia "Psalm of the Heights"
The sweet conjunctions that astonish us - Conrad Hilberry "Zero"
The Conjunction of the Mind - Andrew Marvell "The Definition of Love"
From landscape to unsuppressed conjunction - Charles Wright "Homage to What's-His-Name"
Connote:
Used to connote a blank space - Mary Jo Bang "Speech Is Designed to Persuade"
Context.
Contradiction.
Countersign:
To solve the doubt, watchword and countersign - John G. Nicolay, Private Secretary to President Lincoln "On Guard" [The Continental Monthly v.II no.VI, Dec. 1862]
She passes with her perfect countersign - Leonora Speyer "April on the Battlefields"
Creole:
a pidgin picking its way into a creole - Malcolm Friend "Caliban Theory"
Cuneiform:
A maze of cuneiform streets - Sandy Florian "Our Big City"
Curse.
Cursive.
Decipher.
Denote:
Ashes denote that fire was - Emily Dickinson "Book 3: Life XXX: Fire"
Describe.
Dialect.
Dialectic:
Dark's velvet dialectic - Adrienne Rich "Rusted Legacy"
Dialogue:
Threadbare as a dialogue assumed - Edwin Torres "E.G. as I.E."
Fit his tongue to dialogues of business, love, or strife - William Wordsworth "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"
Dictionary.
Digit/Digital.
Ellipsis:
The verbed streetlights make ellipsis - Adrian Matejka "16 Bars Poetica"
Eloquence.
Epithet:
An angry epithet baring its teeth - Mouna Ammar "1 Zmagria Place"
Etymology:
The etymology of necessity - Rae Gouirand "Quince Suite"
Look up the etymology of melancholia - Amie Whittemore "Lunar Eclipse"
Etymon:
Who will reconstruct the etymon of hunger - Giorgiomaria Cornelio "La consegna delle braci [The Distribution of Embers]" transl. by Moira Egan
Euphemism:
Never meant to live in euphemism - Randall Mann "Realtor"
Falsehood.
Figurative:
Figurative dreams that now haunt us - Paisley Rekdal "Philip Larkin's Koan"
Fluent.
Glossary:
Their glossary of knocks - Traci Brimhall "Aubade on a Ghost Hunt"
While these trees held a glossary of stars - Dorianne Laux "Redwoods"
Glyph.
Grammar.
Handwriting:
Who know my left-handed handwriting - Danni Quintos "Quintos"
Hashtag:
Hashtags of interiority - Becca Klaver "Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie"
Hieroglyph.
Hyperbole:
Metaphoric explosion and grotesque hyperbole - Bruce Boston "Surreal People"
Hyphen:
Asterisk of the sun, hyphen of the moon - Faylita Hicks "Coded Binaries"
Iambic:
My rib cage expanding and contracting in iambics - Daisy Aldan "Everywhere in Constancy, He Is Intoning, Look! Look!"
Its iambic pulse of light - Jamaal May "Better Devices"
Iconography:
That radiates iconographic images - Bruce Boston & Robert Frazier "A Compass for the Mutant Rain Forest"
Of administrative iconography - Michael Leong "from Transmitting the Vertical Immensity of Coniferous Light"
Ideogram:
Between ideograms depicting darkness - Christopher Kondrich "Layer of Ash"
Idiom:
Strain'd with many strange idioms - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto II"
To ask for a crystalline idiom - Prageeta Sharma "The Imperishable and Perishable Family"
Illegible:
I am trying to become illegible - Igor Gulin "Kontur" transl. by Your Language My Ear
Blurs to illegible serenity - Robert Pinsky "The Great Nauset Buddha"
On Memory's page inscribed in letters large and legible - Sylvester "The Dream" [Southern Literary Messenger v.II no.1 Dec. 1835-6]
Index.
Inscribe.
Insult.
Interpret.
Inuendo/Innuendo:
Innuendoes of your inverse dawn - Mina Loy "Moreover, the Moon--"
Pink inuendoes hooded in gray - Lola Ridge "Manhattan Lights"
Invective:
Invectives of the wind - Harold Acton "Ventilation"
Irony.
Jargon:
The jargon of the howling main - Lewis Carroll "The Three Voices: The Third Voice"
No blackbird bates his jargoning - Emily Dickinson "Book 1: Nature XX: Two Worlds"
The jargon of engines quiet - Lola Ridge "The Everlasting Return"
Loud-spoken in the jargon of the day - Iris Tree "[Among the crumbling arches of decay]"
Jest/Jester.
Jibe:
Now all vanishes in plots and gibes - Stephen Vincent Benet "The Last Banquet"
To cast his jibes and scoffs - Cardinal John Henry Newman "The Dream of Gerontius"
How they jibe at loss - William Carlos Williams "Hic Jacet"
Koan:
Speak to the same want of nature's koan - Michael Meyerhofer "Theodote"
Label:
Our yellowed labels all spell doom - Boris Dralyuk "Emigre Library"
Moral machinery is not labelled - Marianne Moore "Reinforcements"
A false prophet robed in attitude and labels - Emanuel Xavier "Legendary"
Language.
Letter.
Lexicon:
A lexicon of crimes they do in my name - Tania Chen "A Toast from Santisima Muerte"
The lexicon of wilds goes on - RK Fauth "Playing with Bees"
In order to enter a new lexicon - Mary Hickman "Helen"
Liar.
Lie/Lying.
Linguistics:
A linguist more learned than Father Wisdom - Alfred Kreymborg "Old Manuscript"
Lowercase:
Allowing lowercase sand to spill from me - Christopher Kondrich "Ruin Valley"
Mantra:
My lips' chapped mantra of mud - Vandana Khanna "Parvati Tires of Waiting"
Bone marrow and unsung mantras - Fiona Lu "Turing Test"
To pour his mantras on our heads - Surdas "Sur's Ocean 175: The Bee Messenger" transl. by John Stratton Hawley
Hear the mantra of the mouse-god sounding - Catherynne M. Valente "Mouse Koan"
Maxim:
All those thousand good maxims we coin - Bulwer Lytton publishing as Owen Meredith "Lucile: Part I Canto I"
A maxim among the wise established - Euripedes "Helen" transl. by Michael Wodhull
Message.
Metaphor.
Monogram:
Mercury monogrammed with fever - Cynthia Zarin "Orbit"
Monologue:
Dreams down its cadenced monologues - Stephane Mallarme "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" (translated by Aldous Huxley)
Hello in a moebius monologue - Sandra McPherson "Driving in Circles with the Blind"
Morse Code:
Machine-guns, tapping a code in Morse - E.W. Hornung "The Ballad of Ensign Joy"
Tapping out my Morse-code alphabet - Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris "woodpecker"
Motif:
A mirror with a feather motif - Mary Jo Bang "Given to Believe"
The sounding motif of my heart, the impetus and goal - Georgia Douglas Johnson "Proving" [Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, ed. by Countee Cullen, 1927]
Motto:
Nailed it as a motto above my door - Arthur Davison Ficke "Ten Grotesques: II. The Prudent Lover"
The motto of modern-day dowsers - Thomas Lux "Indigo Felix:"
Newsprint:
Swaddled in old newsprint and hope - Toby MacNutt "When You Read this Debris"
Nomenclature:
Our flesh a nomenclature of memories - Jacie Ragan "The Secret Lives of Fingerprints"
A cotton-cloud nomenclature for crusade - Leslie Contreras Schwartz "A Body's Universe of Big Bangs"
Noun:
A verb named for its noun - Dan Chiasson "Bloom (II)"
What happens between the noun and the verb - Rodney Jones "The Language of Love"
Every verb desires to be a noun - Kate Light "There Comes the Strangest Moment"
Smug nouns of dominion - Gregory Orr "Eden and After: To Notice"
Number/Outnumber.
Potential Titles: Numbers [category].
Paragraph:
The great paragraphs of dust - Major Jackson "On Disappearing"
Reading far past the last paragraph into the back blank page - Dean Young "Colophon"
Paraphrase:
The early dark is a paraphrase of Mars - Chen Chen "Night Falls Like a Button"
How ego blossoms in paraphrase - J.P. Grasser "time bending / tongue / entwine / the betwixt"
An exquisite corpse paraphrased - Adrian Matejka "16 Bars Poetica"
Parenthesis.
Parse.
Password:
The password of the leaves upon the cottonwood - Alexander Posey "To Wahilla Enhotulle"
Period.
Phoneme:
A phoneme that will stubbornly assert itself - Usha Akella "Breaking bread with phonemes"
Pidgin:
a pidgin picking its way into a creole - Malcolm Friend "Caliban Theory"
Platitude:
Exchanging vows and other platitudes - Natalie Clifford Barney "Habit"
Teetering into platitudes - Diane Seuss "Poetry"
Pledge.
Plural:
History woven from the plural - Christopher Kondrich "Peace Epic"
The plural pavilion of sardines - Pablo Neruda "Migration" transl. by Jack Schmitt
Post-Script:
The post-script at the end of her letter - Waitman Barbe "The Fly Leaf"
Print.
Prose:
Hard prose by daylight - James Russell Lowell "Agassiz"
Proverb.
Punctuate.
Question Mark:
Curled in an inverse question mark of concentration - Mike Allen "The Journey to Kailash"
Lifted away all the question marks - Victoria Chang "The Trees Witness Everything"
Question mark of candles - Gabrielle Civil "19th Birthday in Paris"
Quote:
Quote each stuttered word - Sarah Titus "The Angels Sip Manhattans Wearing the Faces of Our Dead"
Read
Rhyme.
Riddle.
Runes.
Salutation:
Salutation from a guilty mouth - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "A Drama of Exile"
Scrawl.
Scribble.
Scribe:
Let the scribe murder the poet in the man - Sam Walter Foss "The Wail of the Hack Writer" [The Fly Leaf, v.1 no.2, Jan. 1896]
Scribe intentions on the dark - Kevin Goodan "Spot Weather Forecast"
That for a warrior sends a scribe - Edward S. Steele "Armenia Immolata"
Fail to scribe care onto my body - Elizabeth Theriot "Self-Portrait as Self-Care Mantra" [Sugar House Review issue 22, 2021]
Script.
Sentence.
Sigil:
leaving sigils in lipstick on the bathroom mirrors - Amanda Gafford "Tigerlily"
The unending impulse to form a sigil in the sand - Angel Leal "The Witch Recalls Her Craft"
Torn sigils tangled in bones on the lawn - L.D. Lewis "Young Death Is in Love"
Sigma:
The sigmas and taus of constellations - Robert Frost "I Will Sing You One-O"
Sign.
Signal.
Signature.
Simile:
Nothing like our similes - Basho transl. by David Young
I can write similes of serenity & poetic sermons - Regie Cabico "Morning After the Election"
Slang:
my dark surrealism written in slang - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "Bleeding The Calf"
the evisceration of slang on altars made unkind - upfromsumdirt (Ron Davis) "To Stand Down (And To Stand By)"
Slogan:
Slogans and bands and banners - Helen Hoyt "Cheap"
Speak/Spoke.
Speech.
Statement.
Stenography:
Petty stenographers of the crooked rulers - Ammiel Alcalay "My Apologies"
Stop Sign:
sliding through the stop signs - Charles Coleman Finlay "Accidental Series"
Subject.
Subtext:
In the subtext called our lives - Eunsong Kim "On Endings & Longing"
Summary:
Summarize the past by theft and allusion - Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Americus, Book I [excerpt]"
Superscript:
Superscription of bent foam and wave - Hart Crane "Voyages II"
Syllable.
Symbol.
Synonym.
Syntax.
Tag.
Tau:
The sigmas and taus of constellations - Robert Frost "I Will Sing You One-O"
Term.
Terminology:
Sealed by terminology's lacquer - Diane Ackerman "Letter to Dr. B--"
Text.
Thesaurus:
The peacock feather in the open thesaurus - Mukut Borpujari "Stoic"
The color of an ancient thesaurus - Catherine Bowman "Pears"
Take refuge in the deep Thesaurus - Oliver Herford "The Fairy Godmother-in-Law IV: The Ball"
Title:
Their titles to true immortality - Tommaso Campanella "XXXI. To Poland" transl. by John Addington Symonds
As due by many titles - John Donne "Sonnet"
When distinguished among the citizens by sounding titles - Euripedes "Hecuba" transl. by Michael Wodhull
Prove title to your heirship - James Russell Lowell "The Heritage"
The title which those silver tones assigned - P. "Sonnet on My Little Boy's First Trying to Say 'Pa-pa' [Chambers' Edinburgh Journal no.443 June 26, 1852]
Translate.
Translation.
Type.
V [letter]:
Mysteriously enlisted in a V formation of Canadian geese - Duane Ackerson "Three Urban Legends"
Verb.
Vernacular:
In the vernacular of lavender and heather - Richard Blanco "Listening at Reading Farm, an Elegy"
They wear masks and vernacular - Gabriel Ramirez "Learn Your Song"
Vocabulary.
Vowel.
Watchword:
Will be a watchword and a battle hymn - Frank Davis Ashburn "Sonnet [Poor Lucy never laughed much after that]"
The deep watchword of the rushing storm - S. Virginia French "The 'Still Small Voice'"
To solve the doubt, watchword and countersign - John G. Nicolay, Private Secretary to President Lincoln "On Guard" [The Continental Monthly v.II no.VI, Dec. 1862]
The watchword there is Rest - Miriam Clark Potter "Twilight Town"
Word.
Write.
X [letter]:
The accident of understanding what it means to be X - Oliver de la Paz "Solve for X"
Didn't believe an x could equal a y - Thomas Lux "Nullius in Verba (Take Nobody's Word for It)"
XYZs:
In the xyzs of nights and days - Deborah Landau "Ecstasies"
Y [letter]:
Didn't believe an x could equal a y - Thomas Lux "Nullius in Verba (Take Nobody's Word for It)"
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