Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today’s prompt, take the phrase ‘Follow (blank),’ replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: ‘Follow the Leader,’ ‘Follow Me on Twitter,’ ‘Follow Your Heart,’ and/or ‘Follow the Light.’ So many things to follow or not.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt uses the online rhyming dictionary RhymeZone: She suggests starting with a “list of ten words” and using Rhymezone “to identify two to four similar-sounding or rhyming words. For example, if my word is ‘salt,’ my similar words might be ‘belt,’ ‘silt,’ ‘sailed,’ and ‘sell-out.’” Then use that “word bank” to create your poem. Alan followed both prompts today in a fascinating fashion, which we can tease out if we try to follow his NaPoWriMo inspiration. (More on that after the poem.) Follow the Comment Thread Can you see how Alan's playing with sound? The clue for me was in the second and third line from the end, with the phrases "feel sick" and "still check"; there is slant rhyme in the two first words (feel and still) and also in the two second words (sick and check). Can you see any other sound play? The ten words I started with were Trump, corona, virus, bone-headed, White, House, mask, social, distance, and death. I ran those words through RhymeZone looking for rhymes (especially slant rhymes) and similar-sounding words. Here's the poem. Follow the Leader I don't know what to say about that one. It wrote itself pretty much once I had four words elicited by each of the ten seed words. I had no idea what I was going to do once I got the 40 words (50 along with the original 10), but then I saw that the word bank already had a weird yet sensical logic, almost a narrative already, and I just sewed it together with connective words. Who knew? Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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2 comments:
ooo, I liked "boneheaded, benighted band aid!
Thanks! Who is this? Lauren, maybe?
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