Yesterday morning, while I should have been dutifully listening to the homily, I was thumbing through the back of the hymnal, noting that the songs were indexed in in at least three different ways -- by title, by "topic" and by first line. When I got home, I thumbed through an old book of poetry and noticed that the poems were indexed by title, author and first line. Aha! The light bulb went off. Wouldn't it be fun, interesting and/or otherwise challenging to take a great first line of poetry and head off in a new direction? Absolutely. And so, basking in the glow of an aha moment, I give you this week's poetry stretch.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take one of the first lines below and use it as the starting point for your own poem. Here are your starter choices.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take one of the first lines below and use it as the starting point for your own poem. Here are your starter choices.
- Brother, I am fire
- I wandered lonely as a cloud
- Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
- When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
- Yesterday is History,
What a tough challenge! I've written two poems -- a limerick and a four-liner. (I did have to cheat a bit with the limerick, altering the first line to conform to limerick rhythm rules.) Here they are:
ReplyDeleteTime Travel
Not quite to the purpose-- I once wrote a poem using the _last_line of another poem:
ReplyDeleteLone and Level
I've given it a shot, Tricia.
ReplyDeletehttp://aloneonalimb.blogspot.com/2007/10/poetry-stretch-first-linesnew.html