When I was an undergrad in poetry workshop, our teacher came in one day with a bunch of beat up old Library-give-away books. He handed us each one and told us to pick a page and create a poem using the words from just that page. He opened up his book and showed a page blacked out with magic marker except for 20 or 30 words, which he read to us in order to create a sort of disjointed but suprisingly lucid poem.This exercise is great for playing with word combinations and also forces us out of the rut of using our "safe" words.
I kept the book that he gave me that day and I thought I'd share this process with you. Below is page 59 of Sowing The Wind by Martha Dodd. I boxed words that I wanted to be part of my poem. This was one of the poems I created in class way back when (oh gosh, like 7 years ago).
page 59
he became
occasionally
smoke
very fond
of strange,
bitter
Erich reminded her
that only her taste
continued to assert
nothing against seems
“I don’t give a damn.”
“I’m not ridiculous, darling.”
So I decided to try it again. Here's page 215 of Sowing the Wind. Save the photo to your computer and give it a whirl yourself--or try it with your own book. Novels seem to work the best for this exercise.
page 215
insolence,
arrogance,
influence,
significance,
let’s forget it
pain
drink[s]
new
eyes
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