Poetry Writing Exercise: Spare Lines

Inspired by the challenges (and I think successes) from my series of writing exercises based on the novel The Fiction Class (the series starts here; to view others in it, search “The Fiction Class Breen” on the google search function for the blog), I am going to try my hand at a new series of poetry and fiction writing exercises based on prompts provided by the Poets & Writers e-newsletter “The Time is Now”.  This is a great find that I don’t even remember how I stumbled upon.  It is delivered weekly and contains tips and tricks, writing prompts, and information on new resources and contests for authors of poetry and fiction.  For more information, check out the P&W website here.

Today’s exercise is based on the October 27 poetry prompt.  It says to take a poem I am having difficulty with and to double-space it, then insert an extra line in between each current line to expand it and work past the difficulty.  Then you are to go back and revise to “distill” the poem to its “most powerful form.”

Well, I’m not really a poet so I don’t have any poem works-in-progress that are causing me angst or trouble.  Plus I only write in highly structured poetry forms, so you can’t really add a line here and there.  But this still sounded like a cool and interesting idea, so I decided I would take it, tweak it, and make it my own.

So my version: Take a short poem that I have written previously, double space it, and add the new lines as above, disregarding the original rhyme/meter scheme mandated by the poetry form.  The focus will be on lengthening/adapting/altering the original to create a new free-form poem while maintaining the concept/subject of the original short poem, rather than on revising the original to get past the previous difficulty.

Sound good?  I think so too…  So here goes!  The added lines are italicized.

***

Nothing

Nothing.
Absence.  Void.  Oblivion.
That’s what I see.
No movement, no action,
Nothing going past me,
Nothing coming for me,
Nothing waiting for or on me.
Nothing here, there, or anywhere.
Just me
Right now.

***

A Blur

It all goes so fast.
Things move, change, adapt, grow, stop, start –
How, why, where, what, when – who knows?
Movement is all I can see.
All that I do know –
The only thing that I can say with certainty –
Is that it comes and it goes
Always in motion,
In a blur – life, passing by.
Never waiting for us to catch up.

***

The Quiet

I love when the world goes quiet and still;
When the spinning whirling twirling comes to a halt,
When everything stops, pauses, ceases for a moment in time.
When everything is quiet.
Unlike many, this absence goes not give me a chill –
I am not afraid to be still.
Rather, I find it perfect, peaceful, sublime.
The eye of my storm.

If it were up to me, there would be mandatory silence
Enforced by the universe
At regular intervals throughout the day –
Null moments,
Required time to just sit and be ruled by calm and patience;
No action allowed –
Empty time, devoid of work, absent all play.
My own little black hole.

I need time to just be – not be helpful or be clever or be nice,
Not to worry about you or me or the price of tea in China
But to just exist, lost in my own world, my own head,
Sitting in my own quiet dark mental corner, facing the wall.
I am not a rock, don’t want to be alone forever, am not made of ice;
No man is an island, and I am no man.
I need interaction too, need love and conversation as much as water or bread.
I didn’t always.  You gave me that, my love, and I can never thank you enough.

But handfuls of placid moments, scattered here and there
Are still a part of who I am,
Are essential to my psychological welfare.
Without them, I am not me.  Even with you.