Learning about Poetry (part 2): Muse #2 Collecting (idioms)

In the last post, I used freewriting to write down some associations, feelings, thoughts, and relationships to words rolled for from d1000 table in Rhyming Fuel. Since I have not been keeping a journal, the freestyle let me capture a 13 minute look into what came off the top of my head for the 9 rhyming words.

In this post, I will be collecting ideas also based off of the nine keywords and the freewriting.

egg...chicken, birth, lay, breakfast, scrambled, oval, omelet, new, incubate, innovation, hot, cold

leg...broken, chair, walking, kicking, stand, standing, asleep, stable, sufficient, sore

beg...need, want, desire, must have, desperate, beggar, don't have, forgiveness, mercy, ask, motivated

peg...hang, place, hit, decide, fit, plug, mark, holt together, small fastener, home supply store, wooden

vague...unclear, murky, misty, foggy, dark, unknown, confused, brief, barely, unsure, unexplainable

plague...coronavirus, stay at home, walking pneumonia, hospital, contagious, communicable, sickness, long duration, antidote

keg... dynamite, beer, Cracker Barrel, barrel, container, holding, storage, filling, emptying

bootleg...unofficial, underground, copy, illegal, music, movie, 

nutmeg... spice, ingredient, French toast, cookies, baking, eggnog

Collecting, according to the open poetry textbook Naming the Unnameable, is writing down "images, ideas, and phrases" or sparks of poetry.

So for this exercise, I'll write down a few idioms based on the words above.

I like Idioms. In Grammar Fuel: 12,000 Phrases & Idioms, I collected 12,000 mostly American English idioms. Idioms are groups of words that carry cultural based meaning. Here are some idioms grouped together for each of the words.

a bad egg
egg on one's face
walk on egg shells
you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs
a nest egg
all one's eggs in one basket
lay an egg

kill the goose that lays the golden eggs

without a leg to stand on
cost/give an an arm and a leg
as fast as your legs can carry you
pull someone's leg
put one's pants on one leg at a time, just like everbody else
stretch one's legs
tail between one's legs
the first leg
get a leg up
be on one's last legs
fresh legs
break a leg

beg for
beg the question
beg to differ
beg, borrow, or steal
beg your pardon
beg for something
beg on bended knee
beg to disagree
beg something from someone

a peg on which to hang something
fit together like a square peg in a round hole
peg as something
have someone pegged
be knocked down a peg (or two)
take one down a peg (or two)
peg away at something

wake up in a vague fog like a cloudy mist

avoid someone or something like the plague
plague one with something

keg party
powder keg
sitting on a powder keg

bootlegged movies
bootlegged CDs
bootlegged software
This must be a bootleg copy—the quality is terrible.

a wooden nutmeg

That is pretty fun. Already after doing the freewriting and this idiom exercise, it feels like the foundation for a poem is already constructed.

The next muse in this series is Muse #3 Reading. In that post, I'll research some poetry in the past to see if I can build a small chunk of poetry fragments for some or all of the 9 keywords. I may even try to imitate those historical chunks.