In the book I Am Writing a Poem About . . . A Game of Poetry, Myra Cohn Livingston writes about three of the assignments she gave to students in her master class in poetry at UCLA. A while back, Elaine at Wild Rose Reader and Janet Wong, one of the students in Livingston's master class, challenged folks to write ring/drum/blanket poems. This is one of the assignments that is described in the book. The third assignment Livingston gave was to write a six-word-based poem. Here is a description from the book's introduction.
About the last assignment--a six-word-based poem--there was some debate. Everyone agreed that hole, friend, candle, ocean, bucket, and snake presented possibilities, but a few preferred the word scarecrow to bucket, so a choice was given. Hole, friend, candle, ocean, and snake were mandatory, but one could choose either bucket or scarecrow as the sixth word.Now, that is a challenge! We are going to follow Livingston's directions, so your job this week is to write a poem that contains the five words hole, friend, candle, ocean, and snake, as well as either bucket or scarecrow as the sixth word. Leave me a comment about your poem and I will post the results here later this week.
Tricia,
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I'm up for this writing challenge. I'd have to hope that I'd be struck with some real poetic inspiration for this poetry stretch!
Digger
ReplyDeleteAs a friend,
I dug a hole in the ground,
where high tide will rush in
sometime later,
I felt like a scarecrow
inside sand, as I placed
the bucket over my head,
a candle in my hand sizzled,
without air to support its lungs,
high tide came, and the sand
around me hardened like concrete,
my arms and legs crushed under water,
and I got stuck as a snake,
until I was fully submerged.
This is just the sort of thing I need to have in my hip pocket. Thanks for the prompt!
ReplyDeleteI definitely saw a poem in these words today!
ReplyDeletehttp://havingwrit.blogspot.com/2008/05/with.html
I tried to write a sestina but had to give up and write a diamante. Good challenge!
ReplyDelete