by Carolee Sherwood
What has five feet and lots of rhythm? Iambic pentameter, of course! Iambic is a particular unit of rhythm (called feet) — two syllables, an unstressed one followed by a stressed one, like this: da-DUM! Pentameter tells us how many of them are on each line — five.
I most often think of Shakespeare when I consider iambic pentameter. “What light through yonder window breaks?” (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2). “Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2).
Rhythm is critical to a poem. Whether it’s structured or not, rhythm can make a poem more — or less — readable. It takes training for our voices to use rhythm and avoid the “sing-song” trap. Lion cubs, puppies and other critters train to hunt through play: rough-housing their litter mates. We’re going to do the same thing: rough-house with our litter mates.
For this installment of “Games Poets Play,” we’re going to have a conversation, in iambic pentameter, in the comments section of this post. For example, someone may say, “Let’s see if we can talk in metered rhyme!” And then someone else may say, “That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard!” (Yeah, there’s a slight extra syllable in this one, but it still “sounds” right.)
You can say anything you want, as long as it’s in iambic pentameter and as long as it moves the conversation along (and is not too rough — remember we are playing). Please don’t put anything in the comments that’s not part of the actual discussion taking place in iambic pentameter because that may be confusing.
Who wants to go first?
 Carolee Sherwood is a poet and artist who lives in Upstate New York. She is co-editor of Ouroboros Review, mother of three boys and a veteran Read Write Poem columnist. You can find her rambling about the creative life at Carolee Sherwood and drafting poems at I Am Maureen.
by Dana Guthrie Martin
I love first lines of poems. Scratch that. What I mean to say is I love first lines of poems when they work well. For me, a first line works well when it pulls me into the poem or slaps me on the face or does something I’ve never seen a first line do before or is quirkily engaging or makes me laugh or makes me have to know more.
There are probably a host of other qualities that make a first line work for me, but I can’t think of them all. What I do know and can identify is when a first line is working. I know immediately, in my body, before I am able to analyze and catalog the reason or reasons the line is working.
Sometimes when I get a new poetry collection, I flip through the entire book looking only at first lines. Sometimes I will buy a collection only if many of the first lines grab me. First lines are huge for me. Huge! And yet in spite of this, or perhaps because of this, I often sit at my computer wondering how to start a new poem. Oh the blasted first line! How to write it! What to write! What not to write!
Breaking the ice with that first line is never an easy task, but often when I get a good first line, the rest of the poem flows right in.
What makes a first line work for you? Are you as first-line obsessed as I am? Do first lines hang you up? Do they get you down?
For this installment of Games Poets Play, I thought we could do two things in the comments of this post:
- Find first lines from our poetry collections that we love and leave them here. (Note: Don’t leave the whole poem for copyright reasons — just the first line. You can also include the name of the poet and the poem’s title if you want so that members can track the poem down and read it in its entirety.)
- Discuss why you love the first lines you are selecting. Not everyone’s criteria for a successful first line will be the same, and it would be interesting to see what different members feel makes this or that first line a success.
- Write a first line of your own based on the first line you select as a favorite — something you feel responds to or riffs off the first line you have chosen.
You can leave as many of your favorite lines and as many of your own lines in the comments section as you like. Writing your own first lines might inspire you to write an entire poem, which is great. But don’t feel any pressure to do so. We’re just playing games here, you know? No pressure to complete a poem or even start one (beyond the first line). We’re out to have The Good Times, without the pressure of production resting on our writing implements and weighing our hands down.
 Dana Guthrie Martin is the founder of Read Write Poem. In 2010, she is taking a break from completing poems so she can study their component parts, while at the same time learning a new musical instrument, most likely the oboe.
by Nathan Moore
For this installment of Games Poets Play, we’re going to have some fun with randomness and chance. Specifically, we’re going to play with the Random Sentence Generator over at the Creativity Tools site.
Here’s what we’ll do: Generate a random sentence and use that sentence as part of a short paragraph. Post what you come up with in the comments section. We’re not making masterpieces, and we’re definitely not writing poems — but we are practicing our writing skills by using unexpected language as a springboard for our own writing. The idea is that we get a chance to let language surprise us. My hope is that we can experience the way randomness can make us lose our bearings and, for a moment, we can be thrown out of our usual modes of thinking.
Here are three examples. Each uses a randomly generated sentence as the first sentence of a short paragraph:
The disturbance pauses around the goodbye. Its footprints mark the snow as it turns down an alley and gets lost. A velvet sack of money is hidden behind a dumpster. The disturbance stops and slips a lighter from its coat pocket. The bag burns.
The snag calculates! The snag knows your middle name! The snag wonders why you’ve been out so late and what it can do to save this relationship. The snag stretches between the couch and the living room. Why is the carpet damp?
Can a pure stray graduate? To set goals, write a numbered list. These are achievements best attempted when you’re covered in chalk dust. Look, we adore geometry but we’re suspicious of cubes. Please show your work.
Remember, we’re playing. Don’t worry so much about making sense. We’re not making an argument. We’re not trying to sell anybody anything. We spend so many of our hours trying to “communicate.” Here is a chance to make friends with absurdity. Have fun!
 Nathan Moore is community director and columnist for Read Write Poem. In his spare time, he plays with his children and with fire. Never at the same time. He blogs at Exhaust Fumes and French Fries.
by Dana Guthrie Martin
Is the following essay about me true or false?
I love the way hand puppets warm my hand. I enjoy talking to them and through them. Before I know it, my hand is moving on its own, and the puppet truly seems to be inhabited by something — dare I call it a spirit?
Why not ascribe a spirit to a hand puppet. Isn’t the act of playing with one merely a way of projecting one’s own self, and who says self — or spirit — must reside inside one’s physical body? Much the way the mind is comprised of both what is within and outside us, can’t the spirit be both interior and exterior?
I have at times been so moved by my hand puppets that I have teared up when considering their unpredictable, circumscribed, tragic lives (for I often write them into the saddest circumstances during my play time with them). I have clutched many a puppet to my chest, overcome by compassion and concern.
Is the following essay about me true or false?
I once dreamed I had six toes on one foot and seven on the other. This made walking in sand difficult, so many toes into the impressionable surface. But I had no choice. The sock monkeys had wandered into the sea.
It took days to move from one corner of the shore’s loose-knit lip to the other, my toes leaving odd but regular tracks behind me. Children cried monster and squealed, either from delight or fear, when I passed. (It was hard to tell which cry was which, or which cry I deserved. To be feared for no reason is one thing, for extra toes quite another.)
When my work was done, I washed my feet in Downy fabric softener and hummed the song my father used to sing to me every night through his Marlboro-stained lungs: Oh pony, oh pony, how much for your hooves? They’ll grow back, they’ll grow back, I promised they would.
His voice was much like the whistles that pass through sock monkeys when they have taken on so much saltwater their lungs can no longer hold air.
As I hummed and scrubbed, the extra toes came loose in my hands. I rolled them like pumice stones over each heel.
I’m not going to tell you which of my above essays was true and which was false (although you are welcome to guess), because that’s not the point. I am simply using them to (successfully or not) illustrate the essence of this installment of Games Poets Play, which is to not write poetry but instead write essays.
Why essays? Because we sometimes forget this fact: In terms of growing and learning as poets, we don’t always have to stick with writing poems. After all, “to essay” does mean “to try,” and we’re trying to get at something this week.
The point of our truths and lies essay-writing is threefold:
- to write an essay that is incredibly convincing even if it’s a lie
- to find, through the essay, the undercurrent of truth that resides inside our lies
- to excavate our strangest truths and document them so successfully they seem like they simply must be lies
Toward that end, we are asking you to write out, develop and explore as many truths and lies as you can, then post one truth essay and one lie essay in the comments section for this post. Other members can guess whether each item you post is a truth or a lie and can talk about what elements seemed to make each submission seem like one or the other.
Remember, the goal with Games Poets Play is to practice writing, not to try to write a completed piece. Just give yourself over to this exercise and see where it takes you. What you post in the comments section does not have to be a completed work by any means.
Dana Guthrie Martin is the founder of Read Write Poem. In 2010, she is taking a break from completing poems so she can study their component parts, while at the same time learning a new musical instrument, most likely the oboe.
by Carolee Sherwood
When you sit down to write, are you all business? Do you get straight to the point — a free-write? A revision? A first draft? Or do you dilly-dally a bit? Be honest!
Now I’ll be honest: I’m trying to trick you. I am attempting to remind you about the judgments we carry regarding what’s productive and what’s not, what’s “good” and what’s “bad.” I am hoping you remember what you’ve been told about taking your writing seriously: Set goals. Don’t procrastinate. Put your butt in the chair. Eliminate distractions. That’s all good, right? But what about the dilly-dally? That’s bad, isn’t it?
Not so fast! While it’s important to do the work of writing, it’s also important to play. Being playful is a critical writing skill, and it’s something we can practice.
Welcome to Games Poets Play, an interactive column here at the new Read Write Poem — meaning you are part of it! With each installment, we will introduce an activity, and then we’ll use the comments section as our word playground. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Shh, listen!
When I was at the Tin House Summer Writers Conference last month, the organizers made sure we would listen to announcements preceding lectures by tossing in words that sounded like sex acts but actually had definitions that had nothing to do with sex. It was fun to hear the words in a sexual context and then to discover their real definitions. We’re going to keep it rated PG here at Read Write Poem (at least until you warm up to us), so we’re going to modify the game.
Let’s all listen for words that sound like diseases or conditions but are not. Let your ears communicate with your imagination by going through the dictionary and reading words aloud. Hear how the words sound. If you didn’t know the word, could it sound like a medical problem?
Declension would count; it sounds like a malady but is, in fact, a grammatical term. Honewort would count; it sounds like a variety of wart but is a plant in the parsley family. Glioma would not count because it’s a real health problem (a tumor of the brain).
Now go get your dictionary. Let it reveal to you all the possible new infections and germs and malformations you could inflict on humankind. Leave a word or two, along with their real definitions, in the comments of this post. If you want to be especially adventurous, you could even propose a “fake” description of the made-up disease.
 Carolee Sherwood is a painter, mixed-media artist and poet. This moody mother of three boys shares her writing at her site, Carolee Sherwood, and is a senior contributor and columnist for Read Write Poem.
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read write poem news- read write poem napowrimo anthology
June 20, 2010 | 1:36 pmThe Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology is still in production. Selection, placement, layout and copyediting are taking longer than anticipated. Thank you for your patience. I hope to have the piece completed in July. For those who have emailed asking if they can be included, the May 7 deadline for submission of work stands. Those who met that deadline will be included. Please check the post on this site listing who I received submissions from by that date. If you submitted your work by the May 7 deadline in accordance with our guidelines and your name is not listed, send an email to info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
- read write poem napowrimo anthology
May 5, 2010 | 3:09 pmRemember that Friday* is the deadline for submitting work to the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology. Check out the guidelines for submission in the main column (to the left). On May 8, we’ll post a news item listing everyone we’ve received work from. If you submitted work and your name is not on that list, please let us know. Thanks!
*I initially said “tomorrow,” but I meant to say “Friday.”
- napowrimo congratulations, and a reminder
April 24, 2010 | 12:05 pmIt’s the final week of the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge! Just 7 days left. With that, a reminder that Read Write Poem will culminate with the anthology featuring work from those who complete the challenge. A post with details for submitting to the anthology will be published May 1. Be sure you remove any information from the site that you want preserved — such as group content and personal messages. Those elements of the site will be removed May 1 as well. The main site will remain up as an archive.
- ‘underlife’ tour at january gill o’neil’s blog
April 20, 2010 | 8:11 pmJanuary Gill O’Neil’s virtual book tour has moved to her site and is underway now. Check out the lineup at Poet Mom.
 Archive for read write poem news »
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thank you and farewell As of May 1, 2010, Read Write Poem is no longer active.
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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