Poetry Play Thursday – 11/12/09

Written By: Pamela Sweet on November 11, 2009 No Comment

big shoes and imitation Imitation: Does it kill originality?

Some people believe that trying to imitate a favorite poet’s work will stifle originality in your own work. I believe this can certainly happen, but can it also do just the opposite by helping us discover what we truly enjoy about reading and writing poetry Could those discoveries then help us hone in on what and how we should be writing?

Try this:

Read a poem or two by one of your favorite poets.
How did the poem(s) make you feel?
Write down what you really enjoy about those poems: sound, imagery, length, language choice…
Write down why you liked what you chose in Step 3.
Write a poem using the same techniques you enjoyed about your favorite poet’s poem.
Can you spot the similarities and differences between your poem and the poem that inspired it?

Here are a few much loved poems to help inspire you:

HALCYON DAYS

Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honored middle age, nor vic-
tories of politics or war.
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions
calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the even-
ing sky,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the spirit and
frame like freshier, balmier air;
As the days take on a mellower light, and the
apple at last hangs really finished and in-
dolent ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of
all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

- Walt Whitman

THE PLAID DRESS

Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?—
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done
Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare;

All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean
Bright hair,
Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,
But it is there.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I hope you’ll give this a try and share your results here in our Comments or leave us a link to where you’ve posted your poem. I’d love to read what you’ve written!

Poetry Play Thursday