Hi! In trying to come up with a lesson based on a scene in "Chasing Vermeer" on sounds and poetry, I decided to try some "chance writing" based on John Cage's ideas. I took a middle grades novel, and cast dice to choose a number of sentences utterly randomly and form a paragraph. I then recast dice, choosing words from the paragraph in random order, and then punctuated my new paragraph. Here's what I, or rather the dice, came up with (try reading the second one aloud... it's really quite amazing!):
Not a word came to her mind. No blood was shed. Atik had been raised in Anchorage and knew very little about hunting, for his father had been a mechanic. She had never done so before, but now she was ready. Grizzly! she gasped and stopped stone-still as the huge animal rushed onto the ice. Julie pointed her boots toward Kapugen. The smoke curled up from Miyax's fire, and caribou strips shrank and died. As she tied the first piece of cloth to a bend sedge, she looked down on a small pile of droppings. Presently, the pain in her breast grew lighter and she knew the wolf was with her. Blood, Anchorage been never she, and ice pointed Kapugen. Miyax's caribou died, cloth on of the was to shed knew. Little had ready as the boots fire of to down, and her was had his a gasped toward smoke; the piece looked in wolf a. And for now, the huge shrank a droppings lighter. She mind hunting done was stone-still, her strips small came father. She Grizzly! and sedge not been so the she presently her raised rushed from first the very up and bend pain word. Had she a Atik in Julie mechanic, she grew no as before, tied with breast stopped her animal pile about curled onto, but knew. I'm also thinking of bringing in one of those magnetic poetry sets, and having them create their own random class poem. It'll be interesting to see what they think of all this - and how they relate it to their "What is beauty?" theme question. By the way, you do recognize the novel, don't you?! ;-) Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
