by Dana Guthrie Martin
OK, it’s that time. This week’s Read Write Prompt was to use one of the stripped-down poems contributed on the prompt post and build it up using your own words. Did you all take me up on that challenge? I sure hope so.
In the comments, leave a link to your poem and, on your site, make sure you mention the poet whose work you used. You might even want to share the stripped-down poem along with yours so people can see what you had to start with and what you were able to make from it.
It would also be interesting to talk about the process. Did it work for you? Was it challenging, in good and bad ways, or both? Would you try it again? Were you completely stuck and unable to work with the stripped-down poem?
And of course, if you didn’t do this week’s Read Write Prompt, that’s A-OK. Just share something with the other participants, if you’d be so kind.
Oh and also, do try to check out everyone else’s work if you can. It will really help the community foster that community vibe, and it will surely expose you to some cool work.
For the new folks: Please take a few moments to read the the about page, the code of conduct and our copyrights page. If you have any questions about the project after reading through those pages, e-mail us at info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
Please only put only one link in each comment. Otherwise you’ll get stuck in the spam filter!
I used throwshiswords’ skeleton to write Passage
This challenge was a lot of fun. Here’s mine, based on the “bare bones” of a cool poem by Christine:
http://throwshiswords.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/poem-lights-of-the-long-night-sky/
What a great prompt. I love collaboration. Here’s what I came up with using the poem skeleton from throwshiswords:
http://disorder1313.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/host
This is what I got out of Dave’s skeleton:
http://firmlyrooted.blogspot.com/2008/08/paring-it-all-down-to-basics.html
Here’s mine,
Last Rites, from Annamari’s. Thanks for the framework, Annamari. I took a few liberties, :-} and hope you don’t mind.
I enjoyed doing this so much I will be back with another, later in the week!
Here’s mine:
“Assent to Darkness” from Nathan’s skeleton (which there is a link to from my post). Enjoy.
Nicole
Here is mine:
http://amidweststory.blogspot.com/2008/08/readwritepoem-41.html
The player is based on Dave’s skeleton. It was a great experience and what is amazing is that just by following his bare bone form closely I ended with a very similar bare bone concept. The images are quite different of course and while Dave was a tree I was a gambler, but discovering the close relationship between form and concept in poetry(duh!) was amazing.
I used Nathan’s skeleton to write the following poem. Thanks Nathan!
Waking up on Westhorn Mountain
Here’s another link to deb’s post, ‘dem bones.’ Love that title, deb!
http://stoneymoss.org/2008/08/25/dem-bones/
Dudes, I used Dave Bonta’s skeleton for my poem this week. Check it out:
A poem rises from the skeleton of a Dave Bonta poem
P.S. Cool that everyone (so far) did the prompt. Awesome.
I used Dave’s skeleton:
http://alotus-poetry.livejournal.com/18321.html
Discussion:
Borrowing Dave’s skeleton to write my own poem was fun! Honestly, I found myself picking out a skeletal outfit from the closet and trying to find out which would “fit” me, that is, which poem would closely resemble my writing style.
So, here I was trying on a few other outfits and getting frustrated because I couldn’t finish them (I did all of this before I tried Dave’s skeleton)! But through it all, I thought it was a WORTHWHILE (and I do mean worthwhile!) challenge/experience as it becomes a tool to try to not only explore other poets’ writing styles but also an exercise to explore other forms of poetry, which I’m willing to do because I’m primarily a free-verse kind of poet.
Anyway, I enjoyed this week’s prompt!
Hey, thanks Christine! Yikes.
I didn’t have time last week to put clothes on an undressed poem. So I’ll just contribute, although I did have a conversation with two mules, old Funnel and Cake, to get this poem right. A Farmer.
This was a wonderful exercise!
http://nibblepoems.wordpress.com/poems/
I didn’t get a chance to do a skeleton collaboration (internet complications solved soon I hope)
I put up a 3:15 experiment poem so it is an experiment of a sort and the project is collaborative in the sense that I’m not the only poet up writing at 3:15am!
it’s called “how to catch a rattlesnake” and you can find it at:
http://artpredator.wordpress.com
I used Tiel’s skeleton for mine–thanks Tiel!
http://stoneymoss.org/2008/08/26/fill-in-the-blanks/
I tried like hell to do one based on Deb’s skeleton, and I mostly did, but in the drafting process it turned into prose, and I ended up taking out most of Deb’s words and adding more of my own. So it was an interesting exercise, but I proved myself unable to color within the lines once again.
This makes me a bit of a hypocrite, since several of you used my own skeleton above. The original, by the way, was here: http://www.vianegativa.us/2008/03/17/legerdemain/
I wrote a poem based on throwshiswords’ skeleton, and then revised it, to produce a poem called “bones of the earth”.
The post contains both the skeleton based and revised poems.
I also wanted to share a link to a poem that Kim wrote on the same skeleton, and posted in my blog comments. You can read it here
This was fun!
I chose the skeleton from A~Lotus.
*Part V*
I’m a newbie, but thought I’d give it a shot.
I used Annamari’s skeleton. You can see my version at http://scrapsandsass.blogspot.com
here’s my
dark night
I used Nicole’s (Raven’s Wing Poetry) poem, after finishing mine and reading hers, I rather much like her version better than mine
it was harder to fill in the lines, I did not add extra but fill in the exact needed amount of words
it was constricting but I find it a good challenge, good writing exercise
I know I am not supposed to write comments in here, but since i could not find a way to comment on Kimberlee’s post so:
after i posted the framework I was thinking that ,the way it looked somebody should make something playful out of it -and you did just that.
Please visit my site and vote for your favorites at the bottom of the page, or leave a comment. I am looking for critiques and/or peer review.
punatik.blogspot.com
Thanks,
Emilio