Mad Libs Poetry

I recently contributed a post about Mad Libs Poetry (a form of erasure poetry) to the Literatures in English blog. It’s a great programming idea for teachers and librarians of all stripes!

“On the Vanishing of Large Creatures,” Susan Hutton

“On the Vanishing of Large Creatures” is the title poem from Susan Hutton’s 2007 collection, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. It’s one of my favorite collections.

“Holy Sonnet X (Death, Be Not Proud),” John Donne

A clip from the film version of Wit, featuring John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet X.”

Clip courtesty FilmPoems (YouTube feed).

“A Separate Set of Signs,” Jenny Xie

“A Separate Set of Signs”
Jenny Xie

A woman boards the overnight train,
her bag packed with rolls of candied

hawthorne and bouillon cubes.
A bulb in the station leaks its weak light.

Does she glow from toothache
or the loose sea winds,

is she heading to the capital
with no papers or is she someone’s

negligent daughter, the youngest of three?
Is she me having stayed behind,

a parallel life with a separate set of signs
and a diet of more rice, less white meat?

Is she dreaming of the rivers
soft with codling in her hometown;

when she wakes on the train car
mattress is her shadow straighter?

Does she feel a body larger
than her own dilated boundaries,

and when she looks out of the window does
she sense the city as closer than it is,

the light having met the smokestacks,
and her hunger small and neat?

This poem originally appeared in Narrative Magazine.

“After the Test Said Yes” by Kelly Madigan

Happy National Poetry Month! And so the Klickitat Poem Project begins! Here’s a poem for today, read by me.

Kelly Madigan’s debut collection, The Edge of Known Things, will be released April 4, 2013.

To submit your own favorite poem as a video or Soundcloud file, email thatklickitat [at] gmail [dot] com. Submissions will be accepted throughout April.

The use of this poem follows Section 107 of the Copyright Act, which governs fair use of copyrighted materials.