kung fu grippe

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:

Four beats to the line (can vary)

Six lines to the stanza

Three stanzas

At least two internal and one external slant rhyme per stanza (full rhymes acceptable but not encouraged)

Maximum of two end stops per stanza

Clear English grammatical sentences (no tricks). All sentences must make sense.

The poem must be meaningless.

Item 7 is a sadistic innovation of my own.