Seagulls and teapots
Leafing through the Peter Sansom book (Writing Poems: Bloodaxe 1994) mentioned in the 'Best Textbooks' thread I came across some some piquant points (pps 35-37) about modish 'poetry' words, past and present, like myriad, gossamer and pensive, or, in the 1980s and 1990s presumably, shard.
" If I am hard on 'shard' I might equally have had a go at the dozens of more sophisticated and up-to-date poetry cliches such as stippled, lozenge, light (often a lozenge of - or stippled with - light), lambent, patina, and for some reason seagull. Why we have so many gulls in poetry these days is a matter for reflection. When you come across a seagull in someone's poem try substituting the word teapot. It is an instructive exercise."
He also alludes to the frequency of foxes in earlier verse-decades, and the rarity of words like vest and settee.
This all sounds like the germ of a competition, either to incorporate in verse as many of the worn-out or neglected words as possible, or depatinate cliche-encrusted seagulls and foxes.
I tried the first of these possibilities, but got hi-jacked by the Spirit of Stoke Poges. I'm sure a myriad of other Erastopherians must be made of sterner stuff than gossamer and can rise to the challenge.
The seagull wails the loss of lambent light,
The stippled leaf hangs shard-like from a tree,
The well-sucked lozenge yields me one last bite,
Here, pensive in a vest, on my settee . . .
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