The Glosa Thread

[Distracted]

Next up, someone do:
Habitation by Margaret Atwood (a poem about marriage)

the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even this far
we are learning to make fire

Her kiss warmed me
The expanse of icy disregard between us was
The edge of the receding glacier.

We played a game of touch and touch not
In which we made the rules as we went along, and
Where painfully and with wonder

We learned what it was like to love
To absorb ourselves in each other, and marvel
at having survived even this far.

Day by day, thought by thought,
Word by word, touch by touch,
We are learning to make fire.

[enterprikayak]

Brava! Well done!

What's the next un?

[Distracted]

Try this one. Priso will love it. (This is the whole poem. I'm terrible. )


"A Word to Husbands" by Ogden Nash

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

[WarpGirl]

Forget Ek's man, I LOVE THIS POEM!!! I'm copying it for my parents and my sister.

[enterprikayak]

Alas! If only he would follow this advice more often! I have been systematically crushing his spirit since the mid-nineties and yet he still displays a distressing amount of backbone!

[WarpGirl]

Oh I forgot, great job with the other one Dis.

[Distracted]

Try this one. Priso will love it. (This is the whole poem. I'm terrible. )


"A Word to Husbands" by Ogden Nash

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

So nobody's brave enough to tackle this as a glosa, I see. Okay. How about this one?

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.

[Cogito]

So nobody's brave enough to tackle this as a glosa, I see. Okay.

Brave enough, maybe. Clever enough, definitely not.

[Distracted]

Cleverness has got nothing to do with it. You read the first line. You write something maybe peripherally Trek-related that makes some sort of vague sense with the line at the end of it. You do that four times. Tadaaa! It's a glosa.

[Cogito]

I've tried, really I have. But however hard I stare at those four lines, all that happens is they stare back at me.

[Distracted]

Okay, then. Let's break it down and write it together. What Trekkiness does "some say the world will end in fire" remind you of? I'm thinking maybe the big crater the Xindi weapon left in Florida might do. And who saw that first hand? I'm thinking Lizzie Tucker. So we'll write this glosa from her point of view. The first stanza might go something like:

Safe on my porch, I sit in the dark.
A bright flaming star falls, a blaze in the night.
Some say the world will end in fire.


Can you do the second stanza? It should end with "some say in ice".

[Cogito]

By the application of copious amounts of blood, sweat and tears I have produced a cheesy limerick for the first stanza. How on earth do you writers do this? I'm exhausted!

His touch ignites my katra,
he's all that I desire.
He is my world, my life and yet
some say the world will end in fire.

ETA: No, it's not even a limerick, is it?

[Distracted]

Not quite a limerick, but it actually rhymes! I'm impressed. I haven't even been trying to make mine rhyme. Too much work.

Go ahead. Keep going. You're one quarter of the way done. Here's a site you might find helpful if you're gonna try to rhyme the whole way. http://www.rhymer.com/

[enterprikayak]

oh yeah, you gotta use a rhyming site. i always do for rhymes. it just saves time. and you see really cool rhymes you would never have thought of.

In word, I always hit shift+F7 to open the thesaurus and find better words than I can think of on my own. Problem is, in RL when I am trying to think of a word and I think to myself, Shift F7! Shift F7! Oh, wait...I'm not at my computer.... Meanwhile the person is staring at me, waiting for me to respond as I stare slackjawed at the floor.

[Distracted]

*snort*