Monday, January 19, 2004

Paradelle Hell and New Pieces

David McDonald and Brent Terry, two poet pals, occasionally offer poetry challenges. I've participated in a few of them. They're fun, but only rarely generate something I would ever consider submitting. This seems to be the case with the latest challenge, which was given by Brent. Write a paradelle (four stanzas, six lines per, with the first line of each of the first three stanzas being repeated verbatim, in the second line.  Same deal with the third line being repeated  in the fourth.  The last two lines must use every word from the first four, and only those words.  The final stanza must use all the words from the first three stanzas, and only those words) AND include all of the following: a traditional, archetypal, poetic symbol (moon, ocean, river, rose, giant foam fan-finger, etc.) a meteorological phenomenon, and one (or a number of) bodily fluids. 

This is what I have so far and have been doing everything, short of scrubing toilets, to avoid getting back to work on it:

Lazy napping sperms should wake and swim.
Lazy napping sperms should wake and swim.
Harvest, this $200 monitor indicates fields are peak.
Harvest, this $200 monitor indicates fields are peak.
Are fields napping? This lazy harvest and $200 sperms
should wake, monitor, indicate peak, swim.

Yeah whatever. I'm working on three other pieces right now, one I'm not sure what one would call it, it's half non-fiction/journalism, half poem. After discussing my aim with my sister we decided that perhaps it was a warped translation of the front lines of my regional scene. Have a place in mind to submit it to -- but it needs more work.

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