read write prompt #68: meaning is optional
by Tom Adam
A lot of poetry is very serious and weighty and, because of that, sometimes it can be downright boring. Themes, metaphors and symbols are an integral part of poetry as an art, but poetry is also putting words or sounds together. Sometimes it is just putting them together!
Experimental poets have put meaning aside and have written pieces based on the intricate use of language alone, e.g. Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein. (You can listen to Stein read some of her poems at UbuWeb Sound.) Others have felt that language itself wasn’t too big of a deal (Lewis Carrol’s “Jabberwocky“). And sometimes, mixing complete nonsense with a very strict form yields interesting results (such as the “double dactyl” developed by Hecht and Pascal, which you can read about in a little more detail here, including examples of the form).
Your prompt this week is to play with words and sounds. Write a poem that may or may not make sense. Make up words. Make up sounds (although that might be really hard to read). Delve into nonsense poetry. Delve into postmodernism, if that’s your thing. Let the story or the point or the theme or metaphors slip to the side this week. Play with language.
And come back next Thursday and Get Your Poem On.
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In late May, an anthology featuring work from those who completed the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge will be published here and on issuu.com.
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postmodernism…somewhere between pollock’s paintings and Keroac’s words…..or something like that or nothing like that….I like the idea and this old guy will try to come up with something.
that should read KERO(you)AC..dam getting harder to spell with each passing year.
Hmm, I guess someone could do a Dada poem with this prompt too.
Here’s a Dada Poetry Generator if anyone’s interested!
http://www.poemofquotes.com/tools/dada.php
I composed a Dada poem back in December 2008. Here’s the poem I’ve written: http://alotus-poetry.livejournal.com/45118.html
It was an interesting generator to try out! Enjoy!
Of Aquanauts
Remember to come back Thursday and get your poem on!
If I can’t come up with one by Thursday, here’s another good one on my blog ~ just click on my name.
Here is my contribution
click my name
[...] to readwritepoem prompt #68 « I’ll Sing All My Song For You (A Song From [...]
my contribution
Glorious
A double dactyl about double dactyls!
Travelszontally
http://thinkingcities.blogspot.com/2009/03/travelszontally.html
I think it’s quite fun to write poems using strict forms like this. I’ll probably be coming up with more double dactyls
Err… correction, that double dactyl isn’t about double dactyls, but about writing poetry.
[...] my poems, read write poem on March 5, 2009 at 12:01 pm this week’s read write prompt — meaning is optional — challenged us to play with the sounds of words. i realized it’s very hard, but [...]
[...] to make my points a bit too explicitly, rather than gracefully (poetically?) allusive. So I found this week’s readwritepoem prompt to experiment with nonsense verse quite [...]
[...] is for read write prompt #68: meaning is optional. Surprisingly enough, it was fun. I tried to write something that sounded interesting and would be [...]