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Piaster 004

Often writers look inward to their detriment. Use one of the topics given to broaden the perspective of the character(s) in your poem. Last week's piaster challenged you with writing similes. The exercise created some great figurative phrases. In the current exercise, add depth to your poem by again using simile. Your poem should make a commentary on culture, world affairs or humanity in general. Try to illustrate conflict and conclude with resolution on some level. The resolution does not mean you solve the issue, but the work must draw a conclusion about your topic. Try to avoid generic phrases, images and sound bites. Your title must be used at least once in the body of the poem. Minimum two strophes. No line length restriction. As always tell a story, make sure your poem has a beginning middle and end.

Please leave a link. We’d also like permission to repost your draft here in a central location where all participants and readers can get an overall sense of what this piaster inspired. If you prefer not to have your draft here, publicly decline when you post your link. Each draft will have its own page for comments, and we will link to your individual blogs encouraging readers to read more of your work.

What do you see?

Once again we ask that you create vistas for your readers. The first piaster simply offered an action with a defined result. Our second, urged you into the dark to create an outcome. The third piaster is similar to the second but expands like ripples from a pebble hitting the water. Remember the first piaster? Rocks, ripples and water? Ignore the babble seems I am making white noise again. I want to remind you that like us, These exercises are all connected and have a purpose.

Piaster 003 Vision Burn Brain Drain

Integrate each of these 11 phrases unchanged and in the order listed throughout your poem. There are no other restrictions. This exercise should cause a few of those synapses to fire.



the moon, broken off like
a red flower brilliant as
her fingers delicate as
the island stretches off the coast like
your backbone rigid like
the bicycle careening down the hill like
soft as
crazy bird its song like
she spun off like
his monotonous voice like
days pass like


Next piaster we look at style, word choice, and how they fit together to affect imagery.
Note on poem structure: as always construct your poem as a story with a beginning, middle and end. Or you could use a variation of three-part organization:

· The description of the scene.
· A meditation on that scene (Examine the experience.)
· A resolution or understanding of the scene. (In this structure the resolution should take place where the poem began but become altered by the meditation.) The key is that the resolution returns to the opening in an altered way.

Example:

· Scene: The poem begins with the speaker overlooking a beautiful bluff, sun sea blah blah blah.
· Meditation: She remembers an event that occurred there. Her first romance, perhaps a whispered secret or an over indulgence of a controlled substance whatever; this causes the speaker to reflect inward and examine deeper feelings around that event and how those experiences changed her.
· Resolution: She scans the bluff feels the sun, sea and realizes she is standing in bird droppings, and not far off the Starbucks at the strip mall has intruded on the space and maybe the view ain’t so great unless you have blinders on, and maybe thats how memory works also.