Poetry Exercise # 8
Ingredients:
1. One regret
2. A natural disaster
3. One perfect thing.
The first line of your poem is going to be #2. Next, imagine/write as if #1 had never happened.
Let the poem unfold during the regret's undoing. This is a literary moonwalk, my friend. What difference would it have made, had it never been made? Who would be born or not born? Who would you have loved or hated instead? Which house would have burned down, which house would have stayed built or not built? Which house would have the most or least ghosts? Do you understand I don't mean a literal house? What perfect thing would have lost its perfection if there was nothing to regret?
____________________
(This exercise was inspired by Bob Hicok's poem "American History.")
1. One regret
2. A natural disaster
3. One perfect thing.
The first line of your poem is going to be #2. Next, imagine/write as if #1 had never happened.
Let the poem unfold during the regret's undoing. This is a literary moonwalk, my friend. What difference would it have made, had it never been made? Who would be born or not born? Who would you have loved or hated instead? Which house would have burned down, which house would have stayed built or not built? Which house would have the most or least ghosts? Do you understand I don't mean a literal house? What perfect thing would have lost its perfection if there was nothing to regret?
____________________
(This exercise was inspired by Bob Hicok's poem "American History.")
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