A Writing Tip by Michelle Reale
MANAGING YOUR WORD BANK

Temporal
Breakneck
Monologue
Axis
Countenance

The above list of inscrutable words — inscrutable at least in how they appear together — represents a deposit that I made in my word bank this week. It joins hundreds of other words that I have collected so far this year in my red moleskin notebook. I make frequent and periodic deposits of words gleaned from a variety of sources, such as books I am reading, overheard conversations, etc. I collect these words like someone might collect sea glass or matchbooks—not only for their aesthetic value, but also because I enjoy them and see their inherent qualities. I bank these words until I need one or more of them. Then I make a withdrawal.

My word bank not only allows me to choose a word that might fit, in a variety of ways, into a poem I am composing, but often I use an exercise, a warming up if you will, in which I randomly choose a word and allow a poem to coalesce around it. The power of any one word is only limited by your imagination in how you will use it. 

Phrases are helpful in your word bank as well! I had three specific phrases in my word bank that I recently used in poems as first lines:

A flawed bureaucracy
Surface level stitching
I could smell blood in the water

Initially, at least, I used these phrases to generate poems. I started out with each phrase and let my imagination take over. A particular word or phrase will often startle what has been lying in wait for me right into my conscious mind. Stretching the boundaries of the literal meaning of a word or phrase is often a byproduct of this kind of word play. When I used “a flawed bureaucracy” in one of my poems, it was to describe the dysfunction of a family system; “surface level stitching” describes a person who has figuratively put a Band-Aid on something that needs surgery.”

Making deposits in your word bank on a regular basis will certainly ensure that you have words that are off the beaten track to help you write the poems that are waiting to be written!

Michelle Reale is a poet and academic. She has published several collections with a focus on Italian-American life, ethnic identity, histories, family dynamics and remembrance and forgetting. Let it Be Extravagant (2025)  is her latest collection from Bordighera Press. She is the Director of Arcadia University’s Low-Residency Program and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.