I’ve been doing something creative with students in my Vocabulary Building with Latin and Greek Roots and Affixes courses on Outschool. We’ve been writing poetry using lists of words we have curated that share the same Latin or Greek root-word origin. I crafted this poem using words derived from the Latin verb torquere “to twist.” It is a fun but challenging exercise to think of ways to use a list of words like this in a short piece of writing, and compose something that makes sense.
Twist
His face was contorted, his hand in a fist.
His bright mind was tortured, his thoughts in a twist.
Distorted reality felt like a plague
that made even this day seem somehow quite vague.
Retorting those lies was essential but tough,
And facing those bullies head-on did feel rough.
But defending his classmate from slander was brave;
he felt proud of the effort he’d made to behave
in a way that was honorable, true to his mission.
He resisted extortion and bribery, coercion.
He’d stood up for the tortoise-shy kid with the quirks
(Quirks made this new classmate the target of jerks.)
In the end his arm hurt him, a victim of torsion,
but he’d stepped out beyond his extreme introversion.
And now it turned out that he’d made a new friend
for whom his sore arm n’er again’d have to bend.
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Copyright © 2022 by Karen M. Wieland, Ph.D
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