Poetry is FunPoetry is FunTurning Common Tired Turning Common Tired

Phrases into Something Phrases into Something UniqueUnique

The Cliché is the The Cliché is the ThingThing

• Prewriting Exercise 3– Come up with as many cliché’s as you can

– Choose several of them to work through the exercise of writing a poem (see handout)

– Models of the type of poem created follow this slide

• Prewriting Exercise 4– Choose one cliché that you think is not really true

– Create a poem that “proves” that the cliché is inaccurate

– This can be funny or serious (yo u pick the tone)

– Models of the type of poem created follow the Exercise 3 poems

textbook sampletextbook sample

I worked like a decent rooster, butCrowing wouldn’t get me to Sunday, soI went to bed when night cracked, and satisfied myself as

I ate the red grindstone and painted three square dogs a day.

Model Followed: Morning by Meredith B.

I was up way before the rooster even thought about crowing

Buzzing around like a crazy person trying to get things done

Dawn was still in one piece before I ever got to bed

Pigs better start growing wings

So I can finally get some sleep

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To Be or Not to Be: Dumb as a Rock

He was as dumb as a rock.Not really. Rocks aren’t that dumb… Staying in one place, anchored to earthLike Prometheus to the cliff as Eagles plucked at his liver…Rocks have seen eons pass, And they remain unchangedSilent witnesses to evolutionWhich of course, didn’t complete the cycle in West Virginia,As he sped his four-wheeler down the mountain passLooked back at us and said with that reckless grin,“Watch This!”Then he soared skyward, because he had missed the turn,And plummeted to those rocksUnmoved by his bravado.Rocks aren’t that dumb.

- Richard Morrell (March 2006)

Cliché by Antonio T.Cliché by Antonio T.

Your as dead as a doornailI hate that statement How can something that never lived

be given life but with the utterance of a word

ButBacteria live on doornailsEven some diseases live on

doornailsMaybe that is what people are

referring to when they say thatWell, that is what it’s going to be

from now onYou are as dead as the bacteria

that live on the doornail.

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Your TurnYour TurnCreate a poem, at least Create a poem, at least five lines, that in some five lines, that in some

way uses a series of way uses a series of clichés in a unique way, clichés in a unique way, or that proves a cliché or that proves a cliché

false.false.