Leftovers. After the previous poem used up so many beautiful single letters, I had in my possession quite a few scattered phrases and words. Metaphor for a person’s state of mind after creating? Perhaps.

So this week’s prompt is to:

Use your Leftovers

What this really means, in the context of a writing prompt, is—make some smaller poems and see if you can’t get them to work together. Like buttered peas, cheddar biscuits, and spaghetti.

(A) If you already have a nice collection of random sentences, great: make a pile and work your way through it.

(B) If you do not: create one. Open to any page in any magazine. Cut out sentences, words, phrases.

Your pile should be a little overwhelming to you, but not so much that you cannot remember the basic words you have at your disposal. So, feel free to weed through it until it is mostly manageable. I would suggest no more words than you can fit onto an 8 x 10 piece of paper, with ample spacing.

Play. Arrange into poems of 2-6 lines. Aim for a certain visual balance.

Here is the kicker: you may discard any “small words” and repetitions, such as “the, and, a, in…”; but any substantial / meaningful words you have in front of you MUST be used.

I would not suggest that my page works, nor that yours will. But, if you give this project your attention, here are some very worthwhile possible outcomes:

  1. Inspiration: Production of lines that can be used as first lines or jumping off points on your way to writing different poems / other work.
  2. Experimentation: Introducing a mood / attitude that may not come naturally to your writing.
  3. Departure: Allowing language choices you may not typically be drawn to, or that you avoid.
  4. Luck: If you are lucky, maybe one or two of the poems you make will be just what you wanted. For me, surprisingly, I am very happy with the directness of the following.

That is all for today. I have a backlog of these collages I would really like to get posted, so I might try doing a post a day for a week in a while here. I’ve been doing more than I have been posting lately.