Lately I've been interested in the juxtaposition of words within lists, particularly in texts that catalog a wide variety of information, like dictionaries and encyclopedias. It started like this, I removed several pages from an old set of encyclopedias in order to use images from those pages in collages. But then I started looking at the words on the top of each page, the names of two entries, listed in bold so that the reader knows where they are in the alphabetical list of entries. Some of these stuck out as nice little two-word poems:
TAPPAN BAY / TARANTULA KILLER
FREE WILL / FREEZING POINT
STINKING CAMOMILE / STIRLINGSHIRE
EMPEROR BOA / EMPIRICISM
SYMBIOSIS / SYMBOLISM
ELEVATION OF THE HOST / ELEVATOR
GERONIMO / GERRYMANDER
Some of those word combinations have shown up in drawings I've done. More recently I've been making lists where the entries alternate between two different types of items. Here's one I made that consists of the names of North American Wildflowers and spells that can be cast in Dungeons & Dragons:
FÆRIE FIRE
HURON TANSY
PHANTASMAL KILLER
GRASS-OF-PARNASSUS
PRISMATIC SPRAY
FALSE PENNYROYAL
FORCECAGE
ARETHUSA
GEAS/QUEST
This one contains the names of insects and Dungeons & Dragons monsters:
REGAL FRITILLARY
PSEUDONATURAL TROLL
GLADIOLUS THRIPS
DIGESTER
PROMETHEA MOTH
TARRASQUE
EYED ELATER
ETHEREAL FILCHER
SPIREA APHID