"The Gathering" The First Exercise

Dear poets and writers (we have to name ourselves something!),
     I offer this experiment to you for your weekend writing adventure.  The instructions may be applied either to poetry or to prose.
Here it is:

This poem/prose passage works in stages: an initial stage of making notes, of gathering words, elements and materials, and a second stage of selecting from among these and composing a poem or passage of prose that arises out of the gathered materials.   You needn't, of course, use all of them.  The richer your gathering of elements (your notes), the more you will have to work with when you begin writing.

The Gathering Exercise

1) Write down a dream, or a waking dream (a few phrases, a summary, some moments of the dream)

2) Describe a tool or a kitchen implement

3) Write an early childhood memory (in a line or two)

4) Make a list of ten things you did today, in order of doing them

5) Write a forbidden or strange thought, as if to someone who would understand.

6) Write a forbidden or strange thought, as if to someone who would not understand.

7) Write down three colors (you can be specific here: cerulean, ochre, pewter pearl, etc.)

8) Write down four evocative or favorite words (words you love for what they name, for their sound, etc.)

9) Make a list of three things you’ve seen since your arrival here, then choose two and describe them in some detail. 

10) Physically describe briefly a person who comes to mind.

11) Write down three slant rhymes: moon/mine; long/thing are slant rhymes.

12) Remember a time of day.  How visually do you know what time of day that was? Describe.

15) Write of an inner feeling by describing the weather

16)  There is food on the table: name three foods.

17.  Begin three phrases or statements with “Because”

What you have just done is to generate a lot of material and feeling for a poem or poems.

Using any or all of the line you have just been given as the first line or any line of the poem, and any part of or all of the material you have just generated in or out of context, in any way you want, write a poem of between twenty and thirty lines or more with lines of 7, 9. 11 or 13 syllables, or any combination of odd-numbered syllables.

Allow the material to determine the poem. Allow the material to teach you something new about how you might write a poem.  Do not force an idea, plot or particular sort of language on the material.  Allow its music and sense to speak to you.