Poems of Chance, an interesting exercise Options

[Cyn]

This is an exercise that was given in the poetry course I am taking. I thought I would share it here. And then show you what I did. The exercise goes like this: Find a dictionary and write down your birthdate- for example: 3-15-81 (this is not mine by a long shot !)

So now write down all the in-line permutations of your birthdate. These will lead you to pages in the dictionary. In this example they would be:
3, 15, 81
31, 58, 1
315
581
158
1581
3158 depending on how big your dictionary is

Now write down the first and last word from each of these pages
In this case there would be 20 words.
The assignment is to write a poem from these words using all the words.

To determine the length of your poem you need to add all the numbers of the date. In this case 3+1+5+8+1
So for this example the poem would be 18 lines. I think this is less important than using the words, but should at least give you a length to aim for.

Lori if you want to put this up as a challenge in the challenge section feel free to move it. It would be fun to see what comes out of this.

Here is my example:

Acadia

Acadia, of my ancestors
the land of burdock and lamb’s quarters
solomon’s seal and twisted stalk,
lady’s slipper and slippery elm,
an anarchy of woodland and weeds
It sings of its own accord,

a chord to arouse the heart, a part
of me that longs to the accession
of its thorny throne, an altar of my own
carved from the burl of its wood.
The need to stay, the need to go.
An armistice before I choose

like Adonis, his Aphrodite or his Persephone.
What is the attraction of such places?
The spaces of time ablate the need
to feed on life’s abduction. I sacrifice myself
like Alcestis to Admetus.
like grasses that bend to the breeze

together, laminal, an accessory
to the pull and draw. I saw an island
in the bay, that day an anagram
of itself. Dark before light. Moonrise
to sunset. All of it a montage
in the monopoly of your arms.

*************************************

List of dictionary words:
Acadia
accession
accessory
accord
abduct
ablate
Admetus
Adonis
altar
anagram
anarchy
armistice
arouse
attraction
burdock
burl
laminal
land
monopoly
montage

[Cleo_Serapis]

Wow Cyn.

This looks llike a really fun challenge to try! You've got some wonderful imagery in your response - love The spaces of time ablate the need
to feed on life’s abduction. I will move this one over to the challenge form, ACROPOLIS and will definitely be back to try this one out myself!

Can a Thesaurus be used as well as a dictionary?

Thanks Cyn for posting this very interesting challenge!
~Lori

[Cyn]

Can a Thesaurus be used as well as a dictionary?

Thanks Cyn for posting this very interesting challenge!
~Lori

Instead of maybe, but a thesaurus may have more common words and be easier to use. But either way, I think it could be interesting

[Cleo_Serapis]

I was just curious as to how 'stiff' the rules are for this one. I look forward to pulling out my dictionary and giving this a try!