The Weight of Exotic Words in Poetry

An unusual writing advice for writers and poets

Self-created (Instagram)

Now — the poetry demands love and care. Even though I’m most comfortable with prose, I’ve tried writing a few poems and I’ve realised — it’s not a funny business at all. First of all — what I write are not poems. They are prose disguised in the form of poems. Some fancy folks may call ’em: free-verse. Yep, okay, free-verse, fine.

And then I read poetry written by others. I read new writers (poets, if you are really pushy about that) and I read famous writers and I read great writers.
I read Tagore and I notice — he makes extensive use of exotic words, but he never misplaces them. What I mean to say is — the words deserve to be there. The exotic words he uses and the way each word is connected to or synchronised with the other enhance the overall meaning and purpose of his poetry.

Now by reading these various writers I have made one observation or conclusion — the exotic words have a weight of their own. Now this weight of exotic words can either make your poetry stronger, or it can weigh your poetry down.

Quite a tricky problem!

And inexperienced writers often make a mistake about using those words. More often than not, they hurt their poetry. What could be a masterpiece…