Bone

I can't figure out if the use of the word "bone" in poetry is becoming cliche or if "bone" just jumps off the page every time I see it. It gives me pause (I love that phrase) every time I see the word. And it's never "bones" (plural), almost always bone. Not "bones locked with bones" but "bone locked with bone" or something like that. It's also not usually preceded by an article, never "touch a bone," but "touch bone". It's almost musical that way I think, how it just drops like a low note. The word is so clean and full of connotations too. I wish I could remember the most recent sighting of bone in a poem so I could provide an example. The fact that I see bone used that way so much makes part of me feel like I need to get bone in a poem lol. But then it makes me want to avoid it because what if bone is a well-known poetry cliche or something. I don't know. I guess if bone becomes the perfect word for one of my pieces, then bone it will be.

Actually, I may just have my own fascination with bones though. Well, I DO have a fascination with bones. I took a fiction workshop about 2 years ago and I wrote a short story that had a character that used to sell her jewelry in the marketplace. The tourists thought it was so exotic and the woman delighted in telling them, "I made them from bones." No, I'm no fiction writer lol. Of course she wasn't the main character and the class liked her more than the main character. Ah, fiction. So after writing that story I read Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones. WHOA! Loved that book. Loved her writing. Again, I'm given pause. lol I love when prose is poetry. So that gave me the idea to give my bone lady her own story. I think bones stand out to me due to my concern for my own bone character.

I don't know that having my own reasons for noticing the word bone takes away from the idea that poets might use bone a lot. Really, it just explains why I notice it so much. Eh, this post doesn't have a point, just something that came out when I was journaling yesterday.