(image courtesy of International PEN organization)
Make Poems Out of Words
If in doubt, make your poems with words.
It's awfully conventional, and individual
results will vary, but usually things work
out fine. Which words? Excellent question.
Let me suggest some possibilities: hail,
moist, ax, electron, pollen, choice, chew,
choke-cherry, Tanzania,, sweat, sweet,
sulphur, gluttony, knuckle, tongue, balk,
rip, Thunder Bay, and, the, when, hence,
fennel,Lesotho, slag, Uppsala, velvet,
and torque. Spread the words out
and place additional words among so
as to create meaning and pleasure.
Stop and take a look at what you've
arranged so far. Then rearrange
the words, as necessary. Rely
on instincts. If you need more words,
remember that English contains
between half a million and a million
words, that there are hundreds of
other languages, and that you may
create your own words. I myself
invented the word "consumocracy"
not long ago. This is just an example,
and I'm sure you can do better.
The number of poems
to be made of words is infinite, so
welcome to the big project.
Copyright 2009
