Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 00:37:09 -0800 (PST)
From: StreetWrites 
Subject: {poetry} In the Beginning, Part 2

Fun with Words
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Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

	-- Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll

	If you regard someone as your friend, you probably feel at ease kicking 
back with them, being informal, having fun, letting your hair down - 
gettin' a bit crazy.
	In the next few exercises, we're going to party down with words. 
By the end of each exercise, you will feel a little looser around your
good buddies, those word fellas - and a little easier about asking them to
go unknown places with you. 

Word Game #1
------------

	When I was a child, everyone around me cussed.  A lot.  I reacted 
against this; I didn't cuss at all until I was well into my thirties.  
One of the things I substituted for cussing was old-fashioned "cussing" - 
fiddlesticks and fiddle-dee-dee, bosh and balderdash.  People are 
startled by such uncommon words, when they have long since become numb to 
more common cussing-out.  Another substitute was sheer nonsense, like,
"Ratsnitz fershlugginer fahrenheit brondstadt!"
	Then there was the inventive use of English.  "You pullulating 
excrudescence of obstreperous obfuscation!" is, to me, a far more 
satisfying description of a frustrating bureaucrat than "F*cker!"
	Using big long luscious words is sheer fun, whether done as inventive 
cussing, comic dialogue, or purple prose.
	I once wrote a parody of a certain spoken-word poetry style that uses 
repetition - a lot, over and over again, with a little too much 
redundancy.  As a playful break, in the middle, I inserted:

    Concupiscient corruption of conspicuous consumption
    Consumptive concupiscience of corrupted conspicuousness
    Corrupted consumption of conspicuous concupiscience

	Playing with words again.

Exercise
--------

Browse the dictionary for at least twenty big, gorgeous words that you 
have never used before in your life, that you've never heard anybody use 
except maybe one very odd professor in college.  They can be big like 
"pullulating", or small like "gules".

Now use all twenty in a fifty-word passage: comic, ranting, serious, or 
any mood you wish.  It can be poetry or prose.

Guidelines for critique:
------------------------

Critiquers should also try to use big words and sound even more 
ridiculous.  This one is for fun.

Write On!
Anitra
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     "Beware of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."  ABS
	   anitra@speakeasy.org   http://www.speakeasy.org/~anitra
	   thalia@speakeasy.org   http://www.speakeasy.org/~thalia

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