For those of you unfamiliar with this Grove City College mating ritual, I shall offer a brief commetnary. Once a fellow has looked to his left, right, and discovered the fair maiden of his dreams in sight, and once he has put a ring on it, it is the obligation of his closest friends and enemies to ambush him and trundle him off to Wolf Creek on lower campus, where he is baptized in the frigid waters. His sweetheart stands nearby with a towel to comfort him through this trial, but woe to the female who forgets the cloth of terry! for she, too, will be cast into the creek without mercy.
Why, just last weekend a good friend of mine made the tremulous journey to the creek, and I had a hand in plotting his demise.
It snowed. Ok, it flurried. It still was freezing, I'm sure. The fellow in question in the best friend of my boyfriend, who surprised him by coming to visit Grove City and acted as a diversion while the groom-to-be was swarmed by well- and ill-wishers. My boyfriend also sort of got creeked...by his best friend, who is twice his size.
All that to say, spring has certainly sprung in Grove City--and may it stay a while! In the mean time, here is another writing prompt for you, readers.
Prompt #4: Compose a Syllabic Poem
What is a syllabic poem, you ask? Simply, a poem with no real rhyme or meter, but a set number of syllables per line and set number of lines per stanza. Like a haiku, but longer and much more arbitrary. One suggested method is to simply compose a short paragraph of prose and then divide it up into lines by the number of syllables.
My Response:
"Writing
is a"
To wit.
That is to
say—
Or can it be
a direction?
Towards wit.
Or, say, a
verb?
To cut with
words acrid and
fine.
To woo.
To win by
love—
Or the sound
that owls make at night?
Twoo hoo.
Sounds in
the dark.
Cords of
love wrapped tight and se—
—cure.
To write.
Putting ink
down.
Saving the sickened
soul with words.
To right.
Towards
correction.
Fix with
words indecent wrongs
done.
What I thought of this prompt:
It allows for whimsy while encouraging structure. Personally, I was not impressed by the example poems we read in class, and I didn't understand why most of them were considered syllabic poems. Most of the poets we studied seemed to try using a set structure of their own design, but the syllabic patterns soon fell apart. I think that defeats the purpose of the exercise and doesn't stretch you as a writer as much as it should. Still, syllabic poems are fun to play around with. Give it a go!
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