a planet with long views

IMPROMPTU #7
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month

The Prompt
The Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira created the cento “Anthology” (see below) using lines from his own poems, instead of employing the traditional method of cento-construction (in which you build a poem entirely out of lines from other people’s poems). Following his example, write a cento that is a self-portrait, or anthology of your life, utilizing lines and fragments from your own work.
Or, alternatively, create a “self-portrait” cento using lines and fragments from

1. other people’s poems (the traditional method), or
2. song lyrics, or
3. prose (fiction and/or nonfiction)

*To see the basic stipulations for writing a traditional cento, see http://myenchiridion.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

The Poem

dan woke up
he is six years old
and he lives in a house with two cats

humans built the kitchen
bacon, eggs, mushrooms,
whipped cream, earl grey

she made them all
some elderly woman
every sunday afternoon at 5am

down the road ben woke up
to find his kitchen in a cloud of bread flour
Muriel and Beatrice created this great blizzard
they called it a donut shop

outside, three teenagers pulled beets
from the garden
they dreamt of opening a tapas bar
and calling it Norman's

a curious neighborhood
from the cats' perspectives
but the raccoons paid no attention.

retraction

IMPOMPTU #6
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month

One of the Prompts9.
Write a prose poem of five sentences. The first sentence should include a pronoun ( not “I”) doing something that itself includes an image/object. The 2^nd sentence should have a different pronoun doing something else with the same image/object. The 3^rd sentence should be a statement about this image/object. For the 4^th sentence, write a simile that is unrelated. In the 5^th, use “I” and relate part of the simile to the original statement. I know this all sounds rather clinical, but here by way of example is one I wrote:

The Problem

A woman accidentally walks into the men’s room. A man deliberately walks into the women’s room. I don’t believe in dialectics but abide by them nonetheless. It is like a painting of someone sheathing a sword. The problem is it is also like a painting of someone unsheathing a sword.

 

 

 

The Poem

 

we retracted the comments about the fish. they took the fish back anyway. the fish was not what was asked for. it was like getting a futon instead of a table. I wouldn't know what to do with it, I already have a bed and a couch.

 

 

wonder market for monsters

IMPOMPTU #4
with the Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month
Prompt: WordBlocks
Words have multiple meanings. Meanings have multiple words. I think of wordblocks as a single-word stand-in to express multiple meanings, or an ambiguity of meanings. I use them in my writing all the time, and often generate them as a warm-up exercise before I write.

1. Write a word.
2. Make a list of other words that are related to this word, in meaning or in spelling.
3. Combine these words into one wordblock sharing letters. (See pictures for example)
4. Keep rearranging, adding, or subtracting words until you have a wordblock you like aesthetically both visually, and linguistically. A wordblock rarely looks great on the first try. Wordblocks have vast potential both handwritten, and typeset either digitally or with moveable letterpress type.
5. Your wordblock can stand alone as a one-word poem, or be placed in a sentence. Try stringing multiple word blocks together. The result is a sentence that provides multiple ways to navigate it.

See Examples Given Here

so i made this thing....