This round ran far too long and annoyed the players, in part because of its length. It was an experiment I will not be repeating in this format. In future posts you will be able to see me do something similar with song lyrics which worked much better.
The scoring was one point per word and one point for the poet.
It’s National Poetry Month
1. “Do not go gentle into that good night “Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against (5 words)
Dylan Thomas
the dying of the light.
2. A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a (4 words)?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
raisin in the sun
3. “This Is Just To Say”
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
(3 words)
William Carlos Williams
and so cold
4. “Jabberwocky”
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
(5 words)
Lewis Carroll
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
5. ”The Raven”
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping (4 words)
Edgar Allan Poe
at my chamber door.
6. “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond”
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, (4 words)
has such small hands
E. E. Cummings
7. “The Tyger”
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy (2 words)
William Blake
fearful symmetry?
8. “Fire and Ice”
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
(3 words)
Robert Frost
And would suffice.
9. “The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
(3 words)
T.S. Eliot
Talking of Michelangelo.
10. “Where the Sidewalk Ends”
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And (4 words)
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Shel Silverstein
before the street begins,
