Contrary to the alleged wisdom of Roget’s Super Thesaurus 1995 edition (what deemed it “super” the tome never explained): “poetry” and “prose” are NOT synonyms. Thirteen-year-old me did not realize this. I trusted the almighty power of the printed word. Old notebooks now hold embarrassing hand-lettered titlepages. Of course, by “hand-lettered,” I mean letters cut from Seventeen magazine like a ransom note.
I digress.
Full disclosure: I don’t write poetry very often.
Any more at least. Between the ages of twelve and seventeen, I filled nearly a dozen hand-written journals with my awkward, adolescent odes. In some of the earlier volumes, I hadn’t even mastered the dexerity required for elegant cursive writing. And I consulted the aforementioned thesaurus far too often, believing this great book to be the key to it all, thus peppering my poems with endless malapropisms.
I don’t think I’ve gotten better with age.
Anyway.
I’ve written a total of about four poems in the last seven years. Two are terrible. Another two, not so bad.
One of those not-so-bad two, Madrid, Before a Recession, appears in Ataraxia Vol. 4, available here.
When I first wrote this poem, nearly six years ago, it was simply titled Madrid.
I sat on it for a while. Years passed.
Looking at it again, it suddenly became something of a time capsule. (Like a thesaurus from 1995.) And a rather accidental one at that.
I divide my time between a variety of poverty-inducing ventures: writing for fun and writing for torture; watching far too many movies and reading far too few books.
I have lived previous incarnations as bookseller, bureaucrat, filmmaker, zinester, student, and wayward traveller. I studied Film at Langara after seven years at Simon Fraser entrenched in English, Archaeology and about every other Liberal Arts and social science topic you can imagine.
I am very good at Trivial Pursuit.
I am related to Dr. Samuel Johnson, writer of the first English dictionary, which explains my perfect spelling and penchant for black cats.
I once lived in a house in the South Hill neighbourhood of Vancouver with six people, four cats, one goldfish, and a vegetable garden for a front yard. We called it The Commune. It was where I lived with my husband before he was Husband, before he was Fiance, before he was Boyfriend, back when he was just Boy Roommate. Life was a sitcom and we were the “will they/won’t they.”
We did.
Once we ran away to England because we like having adventures. But we didn’t like it that much, so we came home again.
I have the personality of a superhero’s alter-ego. Only I don’t fight crime. At least not yet.
I am currently obsessing over romantic comedies and hosting murder mystery dinner parties (online these days, of course!).
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2 thoughts on “When I was Thirteen a Thesaurus Lied to Me”
Contrary to the alleged wisdom of Roget’s Super Thesaurus 1995 edition (what deemed it “super” the tome never explained): “poetry” and “prose” are NOT synonyms. Thirteen-year-old me did not realize this. I trusted the almighty power of the printed word. Old notebooks now hold embarrassing hand-lettered titlepages. Of course, by “hand-lettered,” I mean letters cut from Seventeen magazine like a ransom note.
Ha ha, thanks so much 🙂
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Well then, I can say I like 25% of the poems you’ve written in the last seven years, and 100% of those that I’ve read.
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