Seeing as

  - I've heard from a few people lately (and I agree) about how hard it is
    to write when everything has to be _good,_
  - All the books on writing I've read lately say the same thing: write a 
    whole shitload of stuff, and if it sucks, just call it 'practice,' and
  - it's more fun in here when people post then when they don't,

I think it's time for another game.

I'd like to get at least two more people to join me on this, and ideally
more.  Here are the (proposed) rules.

  - Anyone can challenge anyone else who's playing to write a certain sort 
    of poem. (i.e. "one about fish," "one that's only 10 words long,"
    "one... with...no...funny...punctuation," "a cheerful one.")  If 
    you've been challenged, you've got a week to deliver.
  - You are allowed to post poems that suck to meet that quota.  You are
    _encouraged_ to write poems that suck.  In fact, feel free to put
    "this poem bites ass" as the title of every single thing you write,
    and if another player says their poem sucks, feel free not to
    disagree.
  - No criticism.  If you're just writing a poem to meet your
    quota, just stick it in this item.  If you want criticism on
    something, go ahead and post a new item for it like usual.

What say you?  Any joiners?

42 responses total.

I'm in!

Dan: I challenge you to write a poem about your mom.  (well, you started the
game, you should be the first challenged. d= )

I'm in too. Do we have to take turns, or can there be multiple challenges on
the table?

hm... I'll leave that one up to Dan, but I don't see a problem with multiple
challenges, as long as the person you picked hasn't already been challenged/is
in the midst of answering someone else's challenge.

I'm in.  <G>  And thank you for the "it may suck" rule.

I'd almost be inclined to have a "it MUST suck" rule, but that might make
people weird. ;}

start your own item for crap poetry, then. d=

I don't see why there can't be more than one challenge at once.  That was what
I assumed would hapen, anyway.

Arianna: Write a sonnet (14 lines iamb-5, your choice of rhyming scheme) on
the subject of dairy products. (Teach you to get snarky with me, missy...)

Brighn: write a sestina (sorry can't remember the rules) on hats.  (teach you
to steal my idea for challenging Arianna to a sonnet)

For the record, since I had to go look it up myself:
A sestina consists of 39 lines, six stanzas of six lines plus a concluding
triplet. There is no rhyme, and apparently no strict meter; rather, the rule
is that each stanza must end with the same six words, all of which appear in
the triplet (three as terminals). There seems to be disagreement on the
pattern of the six words in each stanza, but the logician in me likes this
pattern:
1-2-3-4-5-6
6-1-5-2-4-3
3-6-4-1-2-5
5-3-2-6-1-4
4-5-1-3-6-2
2-4-6-5-3-1
(1)2(3)4(5)6
... so that's the one I shall strive towards.

Thank you for posting those.

I wrote a sestina in a poetry class once but I doubt I have it anywhere. They
are not easy to do and have them make sense I tell ya. But when it works out
it is really quite neat.

Correction: upon further recollection, I remembered that I did NOT write a 
sestina for poetry class. It was a project my teacher was giving as extra
credit. I passed on it. Pardon my brain fart.

Cool-- I'm in.  But many of my poems will probably blow chunks instead.

One thing that I do ask: since I haven't studied poetry formally, if 
you ask me to do something in a weird form or meter I haven't heard of--
 please explain-- I will not always be able to look it up.

Actually, I'm going to have to beg off a few days on the one-week deadline...
ConVocation is this week, and I have a ritual to prep, so I can't give my
sestina serious thought until Sunday.

Okay.  How about next Wednesday?

Hm.  And I've got until tomorrow for a poem about my mom...

and I've got a day to do my poem about dairy (?)...

Ok, here's the deal, I've gotta go to Dallas this weekend, and I've been
stressed too much this week to do this, but if you'll allow me an extension
I'll write one when I get back.

Excuses, excuses.  I get those from my students all the time.
Either you get your work in when it's due or you flunk!


(Oh wait, this doesn't have anything to do with me, does it...)

My dog ate my coprocessor.

My printer ate my homework.

My dog ate my printer.

My printer ate my dog.

Uhm,...


Right.  I'm a day overdue on this mom poem, aren't I?  This evening, I
promise.

Something there is that does not love a wall
That raises up the groundswell under it
And turns the fortress back into a couch...
                                                yeah, well,
it's not exactly Order out of Chaos, we're not talking the
creative energies of the cosmic mother here, just "how _did_
you get peanut butter that far back between the cushions?"

But as far as Destructive Forces go, she's not 
that bad either, since even when _she_ thinks it's back
to being a piece of furniture,
it makes a pretty slick pirate ship, schoolbus, Cosmic Steed, etcetera, 
        and after all, it is her sofa.

<stands and applauds>  Bravo!  

I like this game.  :) I could even be talked into participating, I
imagine.  

Flem, I challenge you to write a poem in free verse -- no rhyme, no
recognizeable meter, and no fair using unrhymed traditional forms like sestina
or haiku.

I *knew* someone would do that!  :)  
Ah, well, I'll give it a try.  

and just to keep y'all up to date...

Currently overdue:
arianna -- a sonnet on dairy products
brighn -- sestina on hats

Due soon:
flem -- a poem in free verse (2/26)

Available to be challenged:
orinoco
aquarum
lumen

(others may make themselves availible, too..)

All right, just for kicks, I'll challenge orinoco to write a haiku, observing
as many of the traditional rules as he can remember.  :)

("There once was a man
     from Corfu -- whose limmericks
         came out like haiku."
                   -anon.)

Uh, right.  That wasn't me, though.  I'll be back with a real one.

All right, I resign. I assume that means Arianna's free to ignore my
challenge. 

I can't write anymore. That last poem was a quirk, or the last drips out of
the inkwell.

You guys be good.

I owe a poem today, don't I.  I've been working on one; I'll be back 
later with what I've got. 

<pout> And I was SOOOOO looking forward to a sestina on hats!

Oops.  That didn't happen.  <sigh>  Thing is, I've got a bunch of 
unorganized scribbling, and I need to be at home and awake for at least 
an hour to do the deed.  That combination of circumstances is hard to 
come by.

All right, this didn't suck as much as I feared.  Here goes.


The Pyrrhic Reaper
   Greg Fleming, 3/1/01

Today, I read that in the City of Peace, war reigns,
and that diminished me.  
I couldn't find the time to call my family,
or write my sister in her transatlantic solitude, 
and that diminished me.  
My cat, of late, has rarely had her fill of my attention.
Her litterbox overflows, and that diminishes me indeed.
And then I heard that a man died doing what he loved,
Excelling one last time before the joyful crowd,
And I felt curiously free.

"I can't explain.  I just can't.
 I am a man of many words, and I can't explain it.
 I'm over fifty years old,
 I have a wife, kids.
 There's no way I'm ready to die out there.
 How I can watch a man crash, die, 
 And then get into my car and go do just what he was doing.
 I can't explain it."
So another man said, SportsCenter spotlight glowing
off the patchwork of his jacket.
I wish I'd not forgotten his name. 

To smash head on, eyes wide, 
into the barricade delineating... what?
No cadaverous invalid, but a virile, healthy corpse,
With crinkles at the corners of the eyes, 
Quiet satisfaction lurking just behind the bristling mustache.

I guess I'm up to being challenged, I've been feeling creative lately.
(Although, shock, horror, this means I'll actually have to _check_ this
conference more than once a month! :)

And just to be pissy.. Orinoco=Jellyfish poem. So there. We'll have a matching
set (hopefully, not at all. Actually, I just felt like challenging you, and
I couldn't come up with anything that _I_ wasn't obsessing over, so you're
stuck.)

Well, since my challenge got dropped (pout, I really wanted that hat sestina),
I'm gonna challenge Snowth to write a poem, any sort or style, that must use
the sound "eek" at least five times, all in different words (like "unique,
pique, freak, and shriek").  Don't use them as line-end rhymes, though.

I like the sound eek.  So sue me.

you say it often enough. d=

{As a matter of pride, and because I'm a sucker for pretty pouts, I realize
it's a month late, but here it is [six beats per line, with some forced
beats]}

There was a golden age, when hats were everywhere: It was the style to go
about with something on your head. The styles were diverse, and each had its
own name: Bowler, bonnet, derby, cap, beret, tricorner, helmet (just to list
a few that come to mind... it shows the modern age that I can't think of any
more). In modern days, what people think is based on clothes, and so it is
everywhere: And so it was back then, when hats had come to pass as meaning
more than merely something on your head.

The artsy Frenchman wearing the beret was showing all the world his flair for
style and its incumbent semiotic plenitude, and its divinely circumvented
truth... what would you think if such a pompous man were seen in his beret
at races, or in the midst of war, or everywhere that such a hat would seem
so out of place, not on the track of what the educated world had come to see
as right? 

Or take a bowler, which has come to be associated with the shape of its so
rounded crown and sturdy brim, that Steed who on that British show did play
a spy, was caused to think to implement his steel-lined headgear everywhere
as if it were a helmet -- this was no beret -- 
nor did the Lilliputian Odd Job don beret when in that movie as the villian
which had come to kill our hero (Mister Bond) -- he everywhere would wear a
bowler which (like Mister Steed's) had its felt-covered brim composed of
metal.

How do they think up such creative things? They merely play upon the way the
people interact with things upon their heads: Whether it be bowler or beret,
hat or helmet, derby, bonnet, cap... just think about the people who wear
hats, and how you come to judge them, just on what they don and whether its
entailment suits your mood.

This truth is everywhere, and if it's everywhere, then it is always on our
minds (and heads) with its benignity: beret and derby have become what we have
come to think.

3/13

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss