Hello poets! So here we sit, on Day 12, with the whole English language at our disposal—the inherited wealth of our Germanic and Latinate roots—and what are we going to do? Throw it out the window! Sometimes the best word is an invented one. To prove it, we’re going to invent a whole bunch and launch them in a poem.
Nonsense verse. Write a few stanzas of nonsense verse employing your own, made-up vocabulary. Nonsense verse can be defined in different ways. Some would include traditional nursery rhymes and Dr. Seuss. What we’re after today is something more akin to Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” a poem you may have read as a child. It first appeared in Through the Looking Glass, when Alice happened on a book that could only be read when held to a mirror. “It seems very pretty,” she said when she had finished it, “but it’s rather hard to understand! … it seems to fill my head with ideas — only I don’t exactly know what they are!”
We can understand something about what is happening in “Jabberwocky” because the invented words correspond to actual parts of speech. In the lines below, for example, we know that “brillig” and “slithy” are adjectives. Perhaps they have something to do with “brilliant” and “slithery,” but then again perhaps not. Likewise, “gyre” and “gimble” are verbs that call to mind gyrate and gambol. And “toves” and “wabe” are nouns. Toves are the things doing the gyring and gimlbling. The wabe is where they’re doing it. We’ve been transported to a magical realm where the sounds and shapes of words are detached from any fixed meanings and we have only a partial sense of what is going on.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Make yourself a little vocabulary before you get started. See if you can invent 10 verbs, 10 adjectives, and 10 nouns. Be sure to include some of different lengths. If you need a little assistance in this department, try this great fake word generator. And remember, this is an excellent time to play with rhyme, since you are in complete control of your word endings!
Why on earth are we doing this?
(1) To prove that you do not need to know exactly what is happening in a poem to enjoy it.
(2) Because rhythm, meter, and rhyme are wonderful fun but tricky to implement in a way that does not feel forced. Letting them out to play on their own, divorced of serious meaning, can liberate them right back into our toolboxes.
(3) Because inventing words is a thing. Shakespeare did it like crazy. Modern poets do it too. Turn a noun into a verb, a verb into an adjective. Make up a word that just feels right, when no other one will do. Your poetry will thank you.
Guys, I had way too much fun with this one:
The Last Imatecksa
Came the tobbled cakeweassl with his kirdo of meef
To the jobox of a great san-plexa.
Turning once, in a cruda, his vassagles streef,
He oncouied his last imatecksa.
There the glit and bloxi crestboots creabered,
All together on a dryngli blench.
Their leader, a rosioned and tartic hissiburd,
Kwarried down to cakeweassl and roodaled his slench.
Cried he out, “By the cenion of my bistup hawkloon,
Fesson to me cakeweassl, don’t pessel me,
Or inloosi we will, our swooflia toon,
And fast purloff you a yaulèd blestbee.”
Unballied, cakeweassl mimbed up the last ‘tecksa
Zoosrickered it forth and rarsocked their bavims
And the crestboots, all kinesqui, ravv’ning out from the plexa,
Left their hissiburd weelt nagled on the stymms.