read write prompt #23: oil and vinegar

What happens when you pour balsamic vinegar over extra-virgin olive oil? The oil rests on top of the vinegar in the cruet, but if you shake the contents, you create a delicious salad dressing.
Prompt
For your poem this week, try combining two elements that don’t seem to go together at first glance. Here’s the process:
• Think [...]

Posted by Christine on 04.16.2008 at 12:20 am// Tagged: Christine, Read Write Prompt , , , , , , ,


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    Use instant messaging to write a poem with a collaborator by taking turns one word, one phrase or one line at a time. With group chat, you can do this with more than one partner.


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    Pretend an event in your life needs explanation. Write the rules for this event as if it were a board game. How many players are there? What is the objective of the game? How do you win? How do you get home? You could also apply this process to a dream, and use the dream as the foundation for the poem.

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    Even though free verse is the dominant style now, formal poetry was popular for hundreds of years. Alternate some of the modern or classical masters of formal verse with modern writers of free verse. Don’t know where to start? Try Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marilyn Hacker, Agha Shahid Ali, Maxine Kumin and many others.

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    Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner-table of power which holds it hostage. — Adrienne Rich