(no subject)
Aug. 20th, 2004 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsyche(originated by Jim Simmerman)
1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you've never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of "talk" you've actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don't understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: "The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun). . ."
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in "real life."
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a nonhuman object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that "echoes" an image from earlier in the poem.
To a Nephew on His Birthday
1. This birthday card is an overcoat
2. made from the wool of an Indian tree.
3. Priests pour holy water on its roots.
The water tickles it alive.
The songbirds giggle in the leaves
and the tree exhales like pine,
drinking the blackberry draught.
4. The card can taste the bark of its mother,
5. the tree the priests of India call Angelique.
6. But the priests have no holy water;
7. they've wandered into far fields, amazed at the rain,
8. the absolute sound of it, bling, bling,
9. falling around them because they have wandered.
10. Callin' into the wind.
11. The robes of their voices drift and riffle as they walk,
12. anchored in mist.
13. The priests enter the cellar of the earth and hide in the roots of the tree.
14. And Fae flies in and settles in the boughs
15. so that the wool can be gathered
16. by feathered shepherds.
17. The priests water the tree with their song,
18. tu mama, yo hijo, tu tia, yo sobrino,
19. and the morning bundles what's shorn,
20. coloring the card with blackberry sky.
1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you've never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of "talk" you've actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don't understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: "The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun). . ."
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in "real life."
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a nonhuman object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that "echoes" an image from earlier in the poem.
To a Nephew on His Birthday
1. This birthday card is an overcoat
2. made from the wool of an Indian tree.
3. Priests pour holy water on its roots.
The water tickles it alive.
The songbirds giggle in the leaves
and the tree exhales like pine,
drinking the blackberry draught.
4. The card can taste the bark of its mother,
5. the tree the priests of India call Angelique.
6. But the priests have no holy water;
7. they've wandered into far fields, amazed at the rain,
8. the absolute sound of it, bling, bling,
9. falling around them because they have wandered.
10. Callin' into the wind.
11. The robes of their voices drift and riffle as they walk,
12. anchored in mist.
13. The priests enter the cellar of the earth and hide in the roots of the tree.
14. And Fae flies in and settles in the boughs
15. so that the wool can be gathered
16. by feathered shepherds.
17. The priests water the tree with their song,
18. tu mama, yo hijo, tu tia, yo sobrino,
19. and the morning bundles what's shorn,
20. coloring the card with blackberry sky.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-21 06:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-21 09:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-24 12:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-24 05:47 am (UTC)I think mine "works" because I kept consciously returning to the base imagery I'd established ("tree", "priests", "water"). But much of it doesn't work, and I'm contemplating actually putting effort into revising this. The author's example has more disparate imagery, but it works very well; it was published in Poetry. I'll post it later as a further point of comparison.