www.thesaurus.com

Okay, so this topic might be only tangentially related to poetry, but I think it's something that needs to be addressed.  We all have used thesaurus.com before when writing a paper.  We realize that we've already used five variations of the word "flee" in one paragraph, so we end up scavenging the list of synonyms on the site until we finally come to the consensus that "absquatulate" is our best bet.  Would most of us know how to use the word "absquatulate" off the top of our heads?  The answer is most likely no.  But in the fury of attempting to finish a history paper the night it is due at 11:59 p.m., we blindly incorporate the word into our sentence without even bothering to check its real definition.  But hey, it makes us seem smarter, no?

I have been using thesaurus.com for as long as I have been writing papers: I feel great anxiety if the tab is not open on my internet while I am writing one.  But over the weekend, I did something I don't think I've done before: I used thesaurus.com to assist me in writing a poem.  Since it was a form poem, I had to stick to the rhyme scheme, and it was difficult to do so at some points.  I was trying to find a word to fit into the rhyme scheme starting with "way."  However, the line I was trying to fit into the rhyme scheme was giving me difficulty.  The line sounded perfect as "Fears of trimming ran laps around my mind" (I was talking about the fear I once had of getting my hair cut), but, clearly, it did not fit into the rhyme scheme.  I was stuck after trying over and over again to rearrange the words, so I finally gave in an turned to good ol' thesaurus.com.  I looked up synonyms for so many words that I can't remember any of the things I searched.  I wanted to keep the meaning of the original line the best I could, but I knew I needed to stick to the rhyme scheme.  After searching and searching, I finally landed upon the word "astray" (I don't remember exactly what search I found it under, but I'm sure the word wasn't even closely related to any of the words in my original line), so I decided to just go ahead and use it.  I ended up changing the line to "Fears of scissors and trimming run astray," which didn't really articulate my original point.  I obviously knew the meaning of "astray" before I found it on the website, but it didn't really fit in with the more colloquial diction I used elsewhere in the poem.  It just sounded really awkward.  But it doesn't matter, right? Because I got the rhyme scheme correct, so I'll get full credit.

Using thesaurus.com for a poem felt weird to me.  In a poem especially, I think it's important that the words be the poet's own so that he or she can showcase a unique style.  I don't think I have or ever will use "astray" in a regular conversation.

I guess this is my problem with form poetry. If poetry is supposed to be such an open-ended, global form of writing, why must we force our work to model something that has already been done?  While there are some great and powerful form poems out there, I just think they are a little bit cliche and limiting.  The threshold for my dislike of the form poem assignment?  Reverting to thesaurus.com in order to stick to a specific form.