EXERCISE: a poetic fragment?

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Original Posting: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 02:32:29 -0500

here we go...

a good companion on
stormy nights when twists of leaves may become serpents

(borrowing from John Bailey)

Take that pair of lines, and let them verberate (I'd say reverberate, but you have to verberate before you can reverb, right?).  Let them bounce around.  Let your tongue taste them, your teeth tangle in those vowels and consonants.  Grumble them through your very own vocal chords, and vibrate.

And let your mind enjoy the echoes of the images, the twists of leaves, the serpents, the stormy nights, and that good companion.

Who is that good companion?  What else lurks in stormy nights?

Then stretch it out.  Add a paragrph (if you be the fictional type), or perhaps some lines (if ye be poetically inclined).  Mix and match, and see where the words take you.

Write?

a good companion on
stormy nights when twists of leaves may become serpents

Write!

EXERCISE: a poeting we will go, a quotation to start us...

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Original Posting: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 21:18:00 -0400

So there are no more words and all is ended;
The timbrel is stilled, the clarion laid away;
And Love with streaming hair goes unattended
Back to the loneliness of yesterday.

So There Are No More Words, 1924, Joseph Auslander

take a few moments and read these four lines.  What do they call to your mind?  Does the timbrel (a tambourine by any other name?)  remind you of anything?  What about the clarion (an adjective pretending to be a noun?  aha, that's merely a confusion by the Oxford American Dictionary, the OED has a shrill-sounding trumpet with a narrow tube, formerly used in war.)  Anyway, what does that call to mind?

And the Love with streaming hair?

The "loneliness of yesterday?"

What did these words bring to you?  What did you bring to these words?

Let your self respond.  What words, phrases, scenes do you want to put together?

Feel free to write a lush and lengthy essay, a rather diverting little tale of tawdriness, or even a sparse and thought-provoking poem...

Or just a few scattered thoughts, without direction, and wandering where they will?

But write!

EXERCISE: What Was That?

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Original Posting: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 04:09:34 -0400

There was the scent of cinnamon and apples baking wafting down the hospital corridors.

Passive, but perhaps it's a place to start?

Take that first line (rewrite if you must those hoary grey words) and then continue the tale, enhancing our knowledge of who sniffs in the hospital and so forth.

Write?