Poet's Musings

Saturday, August 21, 2010

"The Giantess," by Charles Baudelaire

Exercise

Exercise

1. Scramble the letters of your name; include a middle name if think you'd like those letters.

2. Make words out of the scrambled letters.

3. Using only these words, write the first line and the last line of a ten-line poem. The lines might well be short ones.

4. Optional. Make it a rhyming poem of some kind. I repeat: optional.

5. Optional. Now take the 10th line, make it the first line of a new poem and make the 9th line the second line, and so on. You may of course make adjustments in syntax, etc., to make the poem flow in reverse, so to speak.

6. Don't take too long. Have fun. Drink lots of water.

Sticky Words

*
*
*
*
*

Stuck With Words

Touch a word, your finger
might stick to it, as if
the word is saying you.
Jack Spicer advised wearing
gloves. Or did he? He advised
a lot. Those blasted words,
they want you working for them,
not the other way around. They'll
find you on a street in Istanbul
where you stopped to rest
and drink some tea. They'll
show up in North Carolina just
when you went out on the porch
to get away from chatter.

You want them working for you.
What if you stopped wanting that?
But how would that? Let it. Photo
of a toe. Toe photo, tofu, o future
once and present perfect queen
of Fubaro. Plant corn flakes.

Unless otherwise specified, this
is it. What's the context? I'd
have to know the contest. Hear
the filibuster in a country
church. If the preacher talks
long enough, God can't bring
a piece of legislation to the floor.
But he can knock down the door,
and that's for starters. "For
starters": see, see how those
two words stuck like something
from grass on your socks, after
you sought something in a meadow?

Copyright 2010