recently heard an editor give to his workshop the advice, “you should have your own list of prohibited words.” He was speaking in reference to clichéd idioms, situational clichés and abstracts such as: love, soul, heart, justice, truth etc. He further warned, “stay away from strictly literary words such as: donning, gambol, steadfast, etc.” While he certainly spoke with positive intentions in mind, and while he definitely brandished backing from reputable sources such as Ezra Pound (“a poem should be something you could say to someone in conversation”) and William Carlos Williams (“no ideas but in things”) I think there is something inherently debilitating in this aversion to abstract and literary diction.

While I would concede that the use of a word like “soul” in a poem warrants thorough earning, I do not think it should be immediately sifted out as unavailable. A recent poem by James Richardson brilliantly examines “soul”, the use of “soul”, and the attitudes of the word “soul” in poetic usage:

Disquisition Upon the Soul 

It doesn’t register the kid on roller blades, 
Or two on the bench that winds sends lightly together, 
Or the Times they leave, or who sleeps under it. 
No, those are the heart’s. The soul is an old, slow camera 
That shows which way the waveless ocean was 
And the day, and darkness, and again the day; 
But all things moved or moving, us or ours, 
It sees through. Therefore it does not see them. 
Is it restlessness, then, that in the thick of our lives 
Sends us to windows, wishing for the end 
Of all that has made us happy? That, sadly, 
Is also the heart. The soul would not know 
Which dying friend you thought you could leave for dead, 
What shattering love you could leave your daughter for, 
Or that you stayed, since no one stays long enough, 
And, being immortal, hardly knows it was alive 
When it is back were it came from after all our years, 
As faintly blued as snow is from the height of our skies 
And heavier only by the sound of waters. 

—James Richardson

Richardson clearly takes on his subject with a knowledge of the wariness with which readers approach a word such as this one in a poem. The word “Disquisition” in the title serves to reflect exactly how intensely the word must be interrogated in order to cut a true and tangible meaning out of it. However, once Richardson begins this disquisition he opens up new definitions, brings to the reader a new resonance and appreciation for this untouchable word.

Another poem by Richard Eberhart, operates wholly in the realm of the abstract. There are no tangible images that anchor this poem to the ground, though it remains far from a dismissible poem:

The Full of Joy Do Not Know; They Need Not 

The full of joy do not know; they need not 
Know. Nothing is reconciled. 
They flash the light of Heaven indeed. 
Let them have it, let them have it, it is mild. 

Those who suffer see the truth; it has 
Murderous edges. They never avert 
The gaze of calculation one degree. 
But they are hurt, they are hurt, they are hurt. 

These words and abstractions are certainly dangerous terrain to navigate, however to torque them correctly offers limitless impacting possibility. In this poem there is no material story, no way to say what happens on a literal level because the poem exists only in abstraction. Yet, in just eight lines where the final line of each stanza is repeated, the poem achieves a staying power. There are indeed ideas without things.

Further, the issue of prohibiting “literary words” is gratuitously narrow. While there is much to be said for the kind of easily-accessible language used in conversation, there is also much to be said for the less-tapped language of the written page. No one would contend that the sound of a poem, the way it is uttered, is trivial. However, far less is discussed about the potency of the way a poem reads from the page. Before you ever sound a poem out, you must read it. You must see it. You must watch the way it works in print (with of course exception for improvised or solely spoken poems). These literary words may come across to some as elitist accoutrements, superfluous in nature, but they are some of the many vehicles a poet has at access. To make a habit of segregating them from one’s writing as a preliminary action, let alone heeding them as automatic rejections in an editorial screening process, puts one at a disadvantage from the outset. To take from the NRA, words don’t kill poems, poets misusing words kills poems. These words do not deserve to be locked in dusty cupboards somewhere for punishment of their classic usage, they deserve to be revered as challenges for writers to use accurately, eloquently, freshly. When Pound said “make it new” he did not wipe away whole pages of the dictionary, or entire subjects, he simply challenged poets to explore new angles, twist old words and ideas, unwrap a word like soul, poke at it, give it contemporary body, let the reader feel it in a way they never have, interrogate it back to life.

© William J. Neumire