Today’s poetry prompt is to write a poem inspired by a reference book.

Today, I learned what I am.
I’m a Stan, no longer a mere fan,
I’m a Stan—the man.

Normal words
help me each day, also
clever and unusual, obscure (and obscene),
preposterous; the strange,
curious, and lovely lexicon.
In a word: troublesome!

Secretly, I hide in a closet
(or bathroom) where I read
books — about words,
of their history, called etymology;
how to say them, and maybe see
an idiom for future reference.
The meaning of words, the lexemes.

Every word has its morphology,
its synonymy family and
antagonistic antonymy gangs.
Some are humorous, others so literal,
I like snarky things and even
the devil has his own dictionary.

Semantics are arguable,
but without words there is
nothing to say, to communicate
we’d have to find another way.
Do words grow in semantic fields?

My blessing upon the wordies,
the lexophiles, logophiles,
lingua-(and lingo) philes, also
called word buffs.

A poet without a word is like
a seashell without an ocean,
a cow without a patty,
a day without a sun.

© Bill Reynolds (word-Stan) 4/22/2019

Front to back, or look both ways, books about words have much to say.
Mind the gaps or stick in some adjectives.