Illogical Couplings

and Techniques For Creating Them

I was having trouble writing poetry for two weeks – trying to write felt impossible. I
decided to use a technique to get me going. I opened a dictionary and scanned pages not
just for the words that were defined, but looking at words in the definitions to try to match
up, for example, an adjective with a noun IN AN UNUSUAL COMBINATION.

Here’s what I mean: on one page I’d see “undue” and on another I’d see “life”, so
combining them into “undue life” you get what the Surrealists call an “illogical coupling”.
That is, two words that are not normally seen together, and in putting them together, you
get a striking effect - a “wow” that jolts you. It knocks you out of the ordinary by
recombining elements of the ordinary into original ways – and does it with an emotional
impact. It can be an intellectual impact – a conceptual jolt that feels new and exciting. But it
more often, I think, produces a creative and vivid image - an image and feeling that affects
you that way – like you are experiencing the new and exciting.

(By the way, I intend to use “undue life” in a future poem, along with “clustered
substitute”, “factual hindrance”, and “fond increase”, among many others waiting to inspire
a poem that builds around them - and that’s already in the formative stages. These word
combinations are examples of conceptual illogical couplings than the image-evoking ones.)

Getting back to my story, I compiled a whole page of such “illogical couplings” and,
when done, expected to use a few of them to spark me into a poem. Sometimes MORE than
a few of the seemingly unconnected word combinations get used in a poem. My poem
“Detritus” is an example. All I can figure is that I must have been unconsciously composing
the poem as I chose the words and made the phrases I listed - because I used almost ALL of
them in that one poem! I was floored!

But that’s the reason why the poem is so jam-packed with language that has such
impact - and with such striking imagery. I’ll have to dig out the page of word couplings I
compiled to show you sometime and you’ll see what I mean. (In the later editing process, I
did wind up removing a number of the word couplings and phrases I originally put into the
poem.)

But the dictionary technique worked better than I’d ever expected at getting me
moving again in writing poetry - to get a decent poem to come out. And to find illogical
couplings. Word lists (that AREN’T in alphabetical order) are another way to do this, and one
I’ve habitually used now for many months. Magnetic poetry (especially the online click-and-
drag versions) do the same thing. You don’t need to write the whole poem from the closed
body of words in a list or in the magnetic poetry – just get key word combinations that spark
and inspire.

KAW October 31, 2003

[Developed from an e-mail
written October 24, 2002]