1. Challenge: The Roethke-Hugo Exercise

    ADILEGIAN | “Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching” by Richard Hugo

    At length, a quote from The Triggering Town, in which Richard Hugo lays out a really cool exercise from Ted Roethke’s poetry classes, fiendishly appended by Hugo.

    When our poems were coming in void of rhythm [Roethke] gave demanding exercises, and his finals were evidence of the cruelty in him. I don’t have a copy of one of his exams, but here’s an exercise I give beginning students once in a while to take home and return in a week or so, and it is very close to what he would give you an hour to do on the final.

    Nouns Verbs Adjectives
    tamarack to kiss blue
    throat to curve hot
    belief to swing soft
    rock to ruin tough
    frog to bite important
    dog to cut wavering
    slag to surprise sharp
    eye to bruise cool
    cloud to hug red
    mud to say leather

    Use five nouns, verbs, and adjectives from the above lists and write a poem as follows:

    1. Four beats to the line (can vary)
    2. Six lines to the stanza
    3. Three stanzas
    4. At least two internal and one external slant rhyme per stanza (full rhymes acceptable but not encouraged)
    5. Maximum of two end stops per stanza
    6. Clear English grammatical sentences (no tricks). All sentences must make sense.
    7. The poem must be meaningless.

    Item 7 is a sadistic innovation of my own.

    I did one. Now you.

And, then, you were all...

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