NEGOTIATING NIGHT

Geez thanks Lisa, yeah I sleep with a massive dictionary by my head, for a few years now...I haven't looked up new words in a few months, been meaning to get to that.  I used to like reading books and finding a selection of the first ten to twenty words I did not know and then attempt to use them in a poem. It was always a challenge.  Words are amazing.  I found a website with obscure words, and it mystifies me how rich the English language is.  I think as a poet you want to be somewhat obscure so someone has to do SOME work to understand you, but really they are making efforts to understand how they themselves personally associate and build meaning; but the poet initiates and constructs the cues that engage audiences with that process, so learning new words is an ongoing battle for the poet.  I sometimes mistake the context or meaning of a word, and use it out of context for a long time I.E.) I used to use CONTINUITY and CONTIGUITY together thinking contiguity meant Incontinuity, when it means placed near or something, but that creates a whole new set of meanings, sometimes poetry is accidental meanings and that all cool...language has a semantic drift, in virtue of its use.  By the time I am sixty to eighty I will be a good poet. 

~Rockwell