August 2022 - Workshop Shit!
Workshop Prompt: August 2022
For the August Workshop, poets were encouraged to think about how we often pay homage to other poets by borrowing lines as starting points or ending points for our own poems. In this prompt, poets at the workshop listed poems they knew, and picked-out the first and last lines of those poems. Using two of the poems, each poet would write an original poem using the last line of one poem as a starting point, and the first line of another as an ending point. To offer an example of how the prompt might look, and how some poems written from this prompt might come out, included here is the chart that was used to identify poems with first and last lines, as well as two poems that came out of the free write that evening.
The Rules:
Each poet shares a poem
Fill in graphic organizer (example above) with Poet, Poem Title, Last Line and First Line (of the poem)
Pick two poems from the list.
The last line of the first poem you pick will be the first line of the new poem you write.
Similarly, the first line of the second poem you pick will be the last line of the new poem you write.
Rikhav’s response:
Fountains of imagination spill from your lips, your face changing with every passing moment, sympathy, sorrow, empathy, hope. Your features mold themselves like clay, into each passing fancy, each change a harsh draw on my heartstrings, a jagged plucking, a cruel reminder of the past.
Around us is the void of existence, a swirl of blended activity that makes up our lives, two concentric circular walls of history, interwoven but untouching. Momentary clarity displays snippets of memories, scenes that still evoke emotion, but no longer remain within my waking world.
I reach out, hand outstretched beseechingly, but I simply pass through your ethereal form. Like a will-o-the-wisp, you are only in the here and now, in the space between existence, lighting my way, neither to salvation, nor to oblivion.
You’re standing in front of me and you say…
Andrew’s Response:
Hey, old friend: I know it’s been a while;
We’ve fallen out of touch, and let our lives
Grow wild, trading wholesome talks for guile …
Doing the stuff we do to just survive.
I’ve been a world away, and traveling
My own lost midway-path through forests dark,
Where monsters menace thoughts unraveling,
And poets past have sung in voices stark.
Where have you been? Lost on some raging sea?
Or weathering wild mountain storms each night?
Or trudging down late sidewalks, peacefully
Forgetting any pressing need to fight?
I haven’t found a guide to lead my way:
I’ve wandered Hell alone … not like Dante.