Tuesday, April 28, 2009

little miss...sock?

Stole this idea (or borrowed. borrowed without permission) from God of Another World.

1. Choose a nursery rhyme. Example:

Jack and Jill
went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down
and broke his crown
and Jill came tumbling after

2. Choose three words. Example: Tiger, cookie, truck

3. Alternate your words and insert into the nursery rhyme at every third word. Example:

Jack and Tiger
went up Cookie hill
to truck a pail tiger water
Jack cookie down
and truck his crown
Tiger Jill came cookie after

4. Say both versions out loud. How did the new words change the rhythm, meaning, and tone in your nursery rhyme? That is the power of poetry, and the power of words - change three words and you will create something new, destroy something old, and alter a story.

5. Post your new nursery rhyme in the comments below, my young poets.

So. I gave it a whirl, and here's what I came up with. *snigger*

Little Miss Muffet
sat on a tuffet
eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
that sat down beside her
and frightened Miss Muffet away.

random words: sock, candle, dish

Little Miss sock
sat on candle tuffet
eating dish curds and sock.
Along came candle spider
that dish down beside sock
and frightened dish Muffet away.

Dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. Now you try it. :)

And no, this is not my poem for the day. I'm posting that tomorrow, because I'm rather stuck.

Now back to the homework. Erg.

3 comments:

heather said...

I actually think this a really great exercise for people to learn and see more about particular meters of things. Because you can see how much the meter changes.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for stopping by and for the shout out above. Where did you find me?

Mother Goose beware. :)

Sarah Anne said...

Hm. I think I found you on one of the Blogs of Note things. The writer mentioned you're blog and I was intrigued by the title. :)