English 50 – Intro to Creative Writing:
Exercises for Poets
First Lines:
- The King James Bible has long been recognized
for its importance to English literature. Choose a verse from the Bible and
write your own poem with the Bible verse as the first line. You can use the
blank verse of the Bible as a basis for developing rhythm, the subject
matter of the verse to develop theme and metaphor.
- Take a line from someone else's poem, presumably
one you admire, and use it as the first line for your own poem, again
adapting rhythm, subject matter, metaphor.
- Take a sentence or phrase from a novel or
short story or essay that you think is striking and make it the first
sentence of a poem
- Look in your journal for a line or striking
image and make it the first line of a poem. Don't forget to consider lines
and phrases from letters you've received, email messages, phrases you're
heard in conversations, movies, songs, anything to get started. If the
poem goes well, you'll end up dropping the "borrowed" first line.
Subject matter: Try the unusual
- Science is one of the most fruitful areas for
poets today. Physics is especially metaphorical in its language as it
attempts to describe the limits of human knowledge. Find a passage in a
physics text book that seems especially metaphorical in its description and
use the language to create a lyrical description of the phenomena being
described in the text.
- Find a prose passage in a book that strikes
you as highly descriptive and render it in lyrics. Play with the lines to
create meaning through rhythm.
- Don't forget math. This is the universal
language used to describe the universe. Try turning a mathematical concept
into a poem. Or use a mathematical concept to examine some aspect of the
human condition.
- Find a photograph that you find striking and
write a poem that describes what is taking place in the photo.
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This page created and maintained by Jim Manis;
last updated January 31, 2000.