JOURNEY TO NOWHERE
Index
Page 1
Teledon - Antonova - Jonjb - and Ender98
Page 2
Grif/KamaKamelian - and Saphireeyes
Page 3
Zoozappy - Grandmabunny (Teledon's Mrs.) - Don J. Carlson
Page 4
No Poetry Here Yet
Page 5
No Poetry Here Yet
Page 6
No Poetry Here Yet
THESE ARE THE GUIDELINES FOR THE POEMS THAT ARE ON THIS SITE
Write a poem in which you undertake a journey to an unknown destination. The poem does not necessarily have to have a formal "plot," but does have to leave you, at the end of the journey, in a wholly unexpected place: either in the midst of a strange landscape (mental and/or physical) or in the throes of a threatening or exciting discovery (self, other, or both). Begin the poem with a predicament: the speaker of the poem (the poet, his/her surrogate, a fictional narrator, or an actual person re-imagined) is lost, or hunting for something (someone), or is being propelled into a quest against her will, or is on a supposedly ordinary journey that turns weird. Make the poem long enough (sixty-five or more lines) to make it hard for you to predict its outcome. It should be written in some kind of line that you follow more or less consistently throughout (this may be regulary iambic pentameter, or something looser). Long verse-paragraphs suit this exercise, as do six-to-eight-line stanzas with informal rhyme schemes (abaccbca, abbcacbc, etc.) or no "scheme" at all. Some regularity of form helps give the sense that the poem is taking the poet on the journey; it works against a too-rational and too-orderly plotting by setting up a crafty, quasi-deliberate momentum. Besides being fun to write, this journey poem is useful for its challenge to your customary anxiety for closure, an anxiety that may prohibit the imagination. As you write your way into a world created as you go along, you have the privilege of using "useless" material: images that exist for their own quirky beauty, flotsam, and jetsam from actual journeys, revived memories, "superstitious trash" from old legends and stories, dream images and other nonrational arcana. Writing this poem deliberately over a period of days or weeks allows you to enact the journey on several levels, so that what you see resonates with what you cannot explain. Suggested Readings: Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose," Richard Wilbur's "Walking to Sleep," Robert Frost's "Directive."
Click Here to Return to
Antonova's Archives
Click Here to Return to
Antonova's Attic
