Grab five of your favorite poetry books. Open to a random page in each,
copy a phrase or a word that catches your eye, use them in a poem.
feeling certain spirits hovering, I let
Them unwrap me hand and foot
tied was I to what, I am yet to find out
Now I see, now I don't- a glow in front of me
A healthy fleck is floating across my vision
gyrating on its own steam of oath
I let myself indulge in her thoughts
unknown to her, she behaves like an
young heiress of a naked dream
strange is her behaviour towards me
is it amnesia or is it deceit
She can't remember herself as that person
who did cartwheels at the drop of a hat
and let my dogs lick her hands
now her features show her ignorance
she simply steers clear of me
and she walks with her hands in her dress
maybe she is feeling her own femaleness
"I am left there all alone with my visions, so bereft"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lines taken from:
Them unwrap me hand and foot from Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath
A healthy fleck is floating across my vision from afternoon memory by Gary Soto
young heiress of a naked dream from Ballad by Sonia Sanchez
She can't remember herself as that person from Myth of Innocence by Louise Gluck
and she walks with her hands in her dress from Eating poetry by Mark Strand
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
gyrating on its own steam of oath
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This one is excellent.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy and know all of the poets but one. Great lines. Pretty ambitious and you pulled it off.
ReplyDeleteVery good indeed!
ReplyDeleteI must agree that you definitely pulled this off! Very good.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing!
http://bsquared86.blogspot.com/2009/04/poetically-correct-napowrimo-remix.html
This poem gets better and better with each reading! I like the naked dream and the cartwheel and the dogs. So much here to enjoy!
ReplyDeleteThis is very ethereal. You did a great job of weaving the lines in to your own poetry!
ReplyDeleteThis one excellent!!!
ReplyDeleteThis one is very ambitious. Taking the lines from the true greats and weaving them in to your work is gutsy, but you pulled it off.
ReplyDeleteVery good. I love the feel of the whole thing, and how you pulled from other works and used them.
ReplyDeleteI felt a loss of innocence when I read this.
ReplyDeleteYeah nicely, not only did you manage to include the three words but you created a new piece from a a few apparently random lines of other peoples work.
ReplyDeleteWell done!
young heiress of a naked dream is an incredible line
ReplyDeleteThe borrowed lines feel as they belong. Very good job
ReplyDeletestrong imagery, but then, i wouldn't expect anyhing less from you.
ReplyDeletei like how you inter-weave others' work.
ReplyDeleteWonderfully done!
ReplyDeleteGreat poetic creativity here, melding the borrowed lines into a poem of your own.
ReplyDeletegreat idea using different poets lines!
ReplyDeletegreat job!
Excellent job of word weaving. And certainly not a poem to scan through quickly. It deserves to be absorbed.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate what you are doing, gautami, but I'd also like to see you develop this theme without the other voices. It's time we heard gautami's voice without distractions.
ReplyDelete"and she walks with her hands in her dress
ReplyDeletemaybe she is feeling her own femaleness"
Absolutely love those lines. Very powerful imagery.
excellent as usuall..keep it up
ReplyDeleteYou weave this together so seamlessly and with a wonderful rhythm. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteYou did this flawlessly!! I can't believe that it read so very fluidly, I was lost in feeling tethered in the opening than I saw all the different poets - what creativity!
ReplyDeleteBill, whatever gave you the idea that what I write is not my own voice? Maybe you have not been reading ALL my works.
ReplyDeleteDoing such random work once in a while, does not mean I have lost my creativity. And I see this as creativity too but in another direction. And we have to give it it a shot everywhere.
now that was perfectly done..I enjoyed it..:)
ReplyDeleteHello! This sounds great! However it entails having more than one poem book. I, you see, have none! Boo for me. I better work on that....
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by!
I really like where the lines led you. Nicely done.
ReplyDeletegreat patchwork poem, quite a visual feast, though I'm not good at interpreting poems, I do think this one has a certain dreamlike quality, somewhat like a person inside a dream he can't escape from even though he wanted to
ReplyDeleteLeave it to me to not read the small print. Here I am noticing the underlined snippets and thinking, why are they underlined? And then, there's something strangely familiar in these words.
ReplyDeleteDuh! Well I've never conceived of this sort of exercise. But it certainly is interesting. I have a sense of a ghost, perhaps a close relative haunting you throughout. Very cool. : )
Very nicely created..
ReplyDeleteGood and smart..
You are brave.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that you neglected to utilise a verse from the poem concerning a young man from Nantucket?
Actually I was quite apprehensive of this idea of writing random lines from other poets works.
ReplyDeleteFelt it as a sort of plagiarism.
But once I read it I could feel the piece's strngth.
~Harsha
Nicely done. Love this concept of using lines out of poems and making your own.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed - five random phrases and three random words. I would've probably made a muddle of it.
ReplyDelete