Poetry Challenge #257 Love Those Toes
If my feet are happy, everybody’s happy!
Beat the pavement!
Hit the road!
Ants go Marching…Hurrah! Hurrah!
Happy National I Love My Feet Day! (Aug 17th)
Poetry Challenge #257
Hi-Ho Hi-Ho Off to the Market We Go!
What’s in those Mystery Cans?
Imagine yourself off to the market to buy several items—on foot! Important items. Forgetting even one item on the list could mean big trouble for you—terrible terrible trouble. What do you do?
Make a list—but dang. No phone. That means making a mental list.
Turn the list into a poetic march by rearranging items into iambic feet: I am/I am/I am . . . Poet’s choice how many feet on each line.
You might need to change/substitute/rename some items on your list for others that follow fit the iambic pattern. Be creative.
Hint: numbers one through ten have one hard/stressed syllable. Pity the poet whose list includes eleven of anything.
When your poem if finished try marching it out…maybe all the way to the market!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
Be kind to your feet, for if you let them, they will take you far!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2000+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #65-I Yam! Channeling Shakespeare/Popeye
William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, 4 poems and 154 sonnets (that we know of). Of these, many of the plays and all 154 sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. Popeye guzzled spinach from the can and sang one truly memorable song, “I Yam what I Yam.”
What do Shakespeare and Popeye have in common? I Yam!
“I Yam” as in I-Yam-bic Pentameter. Iambic meaning a two-syllable soft-hard beat foot: “I-am” or “I-Yam”; Pentameter meaning five metrical of these feet, thus creating that singsong rhythm—da DA da DA da DA da DA da DA.
That pattern soft-HARD-soft-HARD-soft-HARD (like a horse gallop) is said to “fit the natural rhythms of English fairly well” in that it offers “enough structure to be memorable and enjoyable, without feeling sing-songy.”
Too, in Shakespeare’s case (and maybe Popeye’s creators, too) the words were intended to be memorized—not read. Mimicking the natural rhythm of the english language I am I yam I am I yam I am made memorization easier.*
If Shakespeare and Popeye could do it, surely we can to.
Poetry Challenge #65
I Yam! Channeling Shakespeare/Popeye
Can you write a four-line rhyming stanza of iambic pentameter?
Or, in Popeye-ese, four-lines each line five I-Yams long?
You can rhyme each pair of lines (AABB) or every other one (ABAB), whichever you choose.
Write on any subject you want or choose one of the prompts below.
I wish I could remember…
I love the smell of…
I’m waiting for…
Once you’ve got the rhythm, ala Shakespeare, try writing a complete 14-line sonnet.
BTW: “French and Italian frequently use six-foot lines, which correspond to about the same number of words but with more gender-marked endings,” (Literature Stack
Channeling Shakespeare Playlist:
*Cindy Faughnan nd I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge over 950 days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Join the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge. Click on Fishbowl link below and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl)!
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