This reminds me of "Found Poem's" that were in the Baron Wormser's
Teaching Poetry Day by Day. Excellent idea and a great way to
introduce and practice phrasing, word choice and poetic form.




On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 5:05 PM, Bill IVEY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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-- 
Tena

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