There is this poetry writing exercise where you take an already exisiting poem, and write it backwards. You start from the bottom and work your way to the top, keeping the line lengths the same. So, if you were to take the first verse of "Meeting at Night" by Elizabeth Browning :
Meeting at Night
I.
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cover with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i'the slushy sand.
And then you were to apply this method, you would have:
Sand slushy i'the speed its quench and
Prow pushing with cover the gain I as
Sleep their from ringlets fiery in,
Leap that waves little startled the and
Low and large half-moon yellow the and
land black long the and sea grey the.
Then you're supposed to tinker with it until it makes sense and sounds nice again. It's meant to be a framework from which you can create new verse.... Now, the reason I am boring you with silly poetry exercises is this: I came across a list of the 100 Worst 80's Songs. It's someone's personal list, and I disagree with much of it, but I digress. I thought it might be fun to try this type of exercise with the top 100 worst 80's songs to see if I could come up with anything interesting or of some type of quality. I may not follow the specifications above, maybe I'll just use the titles... we shall see.
Does anyone think this could be a good idea? Or a worthwhile undertaking?
sounds like fun...
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