One: select a line or line segment from a famous work of literary art-- prose or poetry, fiction or non-, in English or another language. (Any line will do but opening lines are preferred.)
Two: compose as a companion line an anagram of the first.
Three: compose a third line as a summary comment on the first two.
Four (optional): compose your Pulitzer Prize for Poetry acceptance speech.
The world is so full of a number of things.
But lufteleformofishornoshwaldings...?
A slap-happy thought from RLS. -- GFH
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree
But, alas, opiate receded, kinky sex mandala hauled under.
(Person from Porlock punctures pipe-dream pagodas.) -- GFH
Now is the winter of our discontent
But lufteleformofishornoshwaldings...?
A slap-happy thought from RLS. -- GFH
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree
But, alas, opiate receded, kinky sex mandala hauled under.
(Person from Porlock punctures pipe-dream pagodas.) -- GFH
Now is the winter of our discontent
with two countertenors done -- finis!
("The Falsettos in the Tower" or "Gloucester Doesn't Go for Baroque.") -- GFH
When in April the sweet showers fall,
herself wilts; whiner aslop; a wet hen.
(The Wife takes a Bath) -- GFH
'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house,
when Father's big car met its host, he won the URL "Hugo's Health."
(This year, St. Nick's gifting every Mother's child with the web address it's always wanted.)
"They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars:
In the beginning God created
bengo diced thin 'n' ginger tea.
(Ginger and bengo being root plants which thrive in Middle Eastern gardens.)
Once upon a time
out pie men a con
did play on a trio of bears (some stories substitute pigs for bears) the pie men had met while attending a gay pride fair.
Somewhere in La Mancha,
a hale Chinese worm man...
can be heard singing, "To dleam the impossibre dleam…"
You don't know me without you have read a book
about Woody the Wooky, Han, Outed Auk Ivor...'n' me.
(Not to mention Lord Vader, Miss Watson's Jim and that Sawyer boy.)
"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot.
"Eat a dread Mummy Lite Snack daily."
(Offbeat amenities in The Towers of Trebizond.) -- GFH
Alice was beginning to get very tired
being given tainted grey-water coils.
("Girls just want to have fun," Miss Liddell clarified.)
On Monday, when the sun is hot...
Oh, no! One's death must whinny?
(Lines Written by a Bear of Very Equine Brain
or, Pooh plus Pooh equals Eeyore.) -- GFH
Oh, East is East, and West is West...
when Father's big car met its host, he won the URL "Hugo's Health."
(This year, St. Nick's gifting every Mother's child with the web address it's always wanted.)
"They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars:
has street appeal; healthy, dry canal; thin, foul rooms."
(Weird real estate listing from Ray Bradbury) -- GFH
In the beginning God created
bengo diced thin 'n' ginger tea.
(Ginger and bengo being root plants which thrive in Middle Eastern gardens.)
Once upon a time
out pie men a con
did play on a trio of bears (some stories substitute pigs for bears) the pie men had met while attending a gay pride fair.
Somewhere in La Mancha,
a hale Chinese worm man...
can be heard singing, "To dleam the impossibre dleam…"
You don't know me without you have read a book
about Woody the Wooky, Han, Outed Auk Ivor...'n' me.
(Not to mention Lord Vader, Miss Watson's Jim and that Sawyer boy.)
"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot.
"Eat a dread Mummy Lite Snack daily."
(Offbeat amenities in The Towers of Trebizond.) -- GFH
Alice was beginning to get very tired
being given tainted grey-water coils.
("Girls just want to have fun," Miss Liddell clarified.)
On Monday, when the sun is hot...
Oh, no! One's death must whinny?
(Lines Written by a Bear of Very Equine Brain
or, Pooh plus Pooh equals Eeyore.) -- GFH
Oh, East is East, and West is West...
Ah, India’s stews taste so sweet!
(Kipling just loved his curry.) -- GFH
(Kipling just loved his curry.) -- GFH
It was the best of times:
I hit me two tsetses. Fab!(I'd just legally purchased my AK-47 swatter.)
Arma virumque cano.
Or, "Quem carmina, Vau?"
(We asked a Portuguese city glee club what they'd chosen to sing.)
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan:
pick up muy-tall nutmeg balls!
(Stephen Dedalus's bodega shopping list.)
For a long time I went to bed early.
Forgotten? My ball...tee...wine...radio...
(Young Marcel possessed more than a few bad habits.)
Call me Ishmael.
I'm a camel shell.
(And my pal Queequeg's a dingo egg.)
We the people...in order:
Theo, Pepe, Lew, Dr. Roe 'n' I.
(Followed, several steps behind, of course, by Indira, Miyoshi, Peaches, the current Mrs. Roe and my own ex-.)
Source materials:
"Happy Thought" from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Richard III by William Shakespeare
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Moore
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Old Testament by various Hebrews
Nearly every fairy tale ever told, many related by Anon
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
"Lines Written by a Bear of Very Little Brain" by A. A. Milne
"The Ballad of East and West" by Rudyard Kipling
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Aeneid by Vergil
Ulysses by James Joyce
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States
