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A Line or Two

One of my online writer friends, Rebeka, wrote an interesting post today about a famous two-line poem by Ezra Pound. In a way, poems like Pound's are sort of the English language version of haiku: concise and image-focused. You get a clear sense of action/emotion from just a handful of words.

Writing very, very short poems like this can be a great writing exercise. Can you condense an observation or experience down into just two or three lines? Or what about stringing a series of very tiny poems together to form a short sequence? I'm also reminded of Laura-Marie, a poet who sometimes shapes poems by writing just one line a day until the lines add up into a poem that feels finished.

I know I've written about similar (if not the very same!) writing exercises before, but that's because I think they work. :)

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Rebeka said…
Thanks for the mention, Amanda! Would love to read any poems people come up with! :)
April 14, 2013 at 5:29 PM
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