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.
