Free Write

Write in any style and about anything you want. A minimum of 250 words. Due at the end of the period.

Ghosts

In the spirit of Halloween...create a short story of 750 words or more with the below in mind. Due at the end of class on Wednesday.

A man who sees ghosts checks himself into a mental institute, not realizing that the facility has been closed for almost thirty years.

Dialogue

Write a dialogue between two or more people during a conversation when they do not think they are being observed. You can pretend to overhear their actual words, or alternately, fill in words that you interpret them saying based on gestures, facial expressions, and body language. Imagine, perhaps, adults when they do not think the children can hear, or the "nice" kids being mean when not watched. Be creative - you may write you assignment in script form, but be sure to include the descriptions of movement and expression.

Minimum of 500 words. Due tomorrow at the end of class.

Cave

Four friends on a nature hike discover a deep cave, complete with running water. As they go deeper and deeper into the cave, they find strange objects–human skeletons, an old computer from the early 80s, a gas mask, and strange mango-sized orbs that emit a glowing blue light.

Write a story that incorporates the scenario. The story should be a minimum of 1000 words, due at the end of class on Tuesday. Remember to split your post into several sections to fit it on the blog.

My Life Flashed Before My Eyes

Pretend you are experiencing the final moments ofyour life.  What do you see as your life flashes before your eyes?  Think of moments and people that have been significant to you in some way.  Write a piece in any style you'd like.  It must be 300 words.  It is due at the end of the period.

Here's an example:

There's a pulse of light that wipes everything away, a flash before darkness comes.   Outside sound becomes silent.  All is now interior; I am left to twist inside myself in these seemingly eternal seconds.  First, FEAR.  I see myself at five, perched atop the bathroom counter, voices calling to me in the darkness.  I see the faces of my wife and son, and they fade; I hear the sound of a flock of birds taking flight.  A tear falls into the exterior silence with an impact that could shatter time itself.  I hear the dull thump of the kick drum before the onslaught of sound; I see my brother's consistently solemn nod from behind his kit, backlit by shin-busters on some makeshift stage.  He urges me on.  I swallow hard, and feel the dryness in my throat.  His hands go above his head, and everything shifts.  I stand over my grandmother's bedside, her face green and gray, her skull shrunken and littered with the same peachfuzz we mistook as a sign of hope only weeks earlier.  Her tongue is swollen and she coughs out the candle of her own life.  I shudder and blink; I see my mother's resilient smile somewhere from a driver's seat, sometime before responsibility put its claws in me.  I feel warm and passive.  The armies of friends and enemies march by.  Sometimes I see the same face in both uniforms.  An M-80 blasts; it is the last day of school, children spring the length of Gavornick Park, their laughter slingshots into a crystalline blue sky.  I feel the peerless freedom of childhood.  I let go.  The world goes blank, and holds.  The moment blisters, swirls with gaseous intensity.  All of my life was meant for this.  This is the moment, pregnant with the potential energy of some violent star, light years away, folded anxiously inside itself, until..

End Word Poem

Write a poem of twenty original lines that contains end words that when extracted from the rest of the poem, stand as another poem.  Here's an example:

He carries unbalanced parcels of sorrow

As his silent shoes move among masses like empty measures

No one hears the echoes, the throbbing cadence of memories

Now relegated to the faceless insignificance of amplified light, blown out

A loud white storm, no one else knows what it sounds like

This is the point when reason and knowledge become cruel

The empty, un-reflected truth rains down like beatings,

The poison of logic is administered

To the servants he left his soul to

Intelligence, sentience, introspection, those

agents that render the mind helpless

When the hunched beast of emotion descends on men

in times most trying

When there is no one to talk to

Finally, he falls down on the cold ground, a slave to the process

The machinations of his own mind, in the onslaught of grief

Ottava Rima

Originally used for long poems on heroic themes, the ottava rima later came to be popular in the writing of mock-heroic works. The lines follow a rhythmical pattern of iambic pentameter (un-stressed and stressed syllables alternating) with an abababcc rhyme scheme. Each stanza is comprised of 8 lines, with the first six encouraging the unwinding of the imagination, while the last two rhyming lines (cc) often give a short pause to rest before continuing and express a truth. Write one ottava rima of 3-5 stanzas by the end of the period.

Example of iambic pentameter:

The da-DUM of a human heartbeat is the most common example of this rhythm.

A standard line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

The tick-TOCK rhythm of iambic pentameter can be heard in the opening line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 12:
"When I do count the clock that tells the time”

 Example of an ottava rima:

Our Canine Paladin

We're sure the robbers shudder in the night (a)
just thinking of our canine paladin, (b)
while Lucy sniffs the air for signs of plight, (a)
in every nook and cranny that's within (b)
her boundaries, in case intruders might (a)
ignore the risk of scratched or punctured skin. (b)
Alas, we've seen the mighty Lucy hide (c)
behind us when she hears a noise outside.(c)

Portraying fearlessness is just a show,
for terriers project their self-esteem
for all to see, from breeding long ago,
they are the leaders of their home regime.
From safety Lucy barks to let them know
to keep this house apart from any scheme,
but with a simple knock she hits the floor
with body wags for any at the door.

No One Knows

Write a three hundred to five hundred word story about a  character who has a secret.  You can take this in any direction you like.  It is due at the end of the period on Thursday. (For Mrs. Ell's class due Friday - do the ottava rima first)

Pantoum

Pantoum

The pantoum is a poem of indefinite length made up of stanzas whose four lines are repeated in a pattern: lines 2 and 4 of each stanza are repeated as lines 1 and 3 of the next stanza, and so on as shown below.

___________________________(Line 1)
___________________________(Line 2)
___________________________(Line 3)
___________________________(Line 4)

___________________________(Line 5) - same as line 2
___________________________(Line 6)
___________________________(Line 7) - same as line 4
___________________________(Line 8)

___________________________(Line 9) - same as line 6
___________________________(Line 10)
___________________________(Line 11) - same as line 8
___________________________(Line 12)
And so on...

Part of the pleasure of the pantoum is the way its recurring lines gently and hypnotically twine in and out of one another, and the way they surprise us when they fit together in unexpected ways. Write a pantoum comprised of 6-8 stanzas, with meaningfully intertwined lines. Try to create an unexpected juxtaposition between the lines to achieve surprise or irony.

Example from Christopher Lane:

A man outside my window

The cat meowed and purred
I kneel by the fire
The darkness comes soon

The cat meowed and purred
She walked between my legs
The darkness comes soon
The stars will guide my way

She walked between my legs
She ran into the house
The stars will guide my way
I walk the beaten path

She ran into the house
Hiding away from me
I walk the beaten path
Stone, sand, and shell

Hiding away from me
The man peeks out
Stone, sand and shell
I stumble to the ground

The man peeks out
He hides behind the tree
I stumble to the ground
I'm running out of steam

Night turns to day
I kneel by the fire
Tapping at the glass
A man outside my window

Sestina

Sestina

The sestina has six unrhymed stanzas of six lines each in which the words at the ends of the first stanza's lines recur in a rolling pattern at the ends of other lines. In the diagram below, the letters A-F stand for the six end-words of the sestina. The sestina concludes with a tercet (three-line stanza) that also uses all the six end-words, two to a line.

Stanza 1:
__________A
_________B
_________C

In this Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop, the six simple end-words are:
A: house
B: grandmother
C: child
D: stove
E: almanac
F: tears

__________D
__________E
__________F

Stanza 2:
_________F
_________A
_________E
_________B
_________D
_________C

Stanza 3:
________C
________F
________D
________A
________B
________E

Stanza 4:
________E
________C
________B
________F
________A
________D

Stanza 5:
_______D
_________E
________A
________C
_________F
_________B

Stanza 6:
________B
_________D
__________F
_________E
__________C
_________A

Tercet:
________A ___________B
________C __________D
________E ____________F

Cinquains

Cinquains

Cinquains

This is another short poetic format with a set syllabic structure. 

Line 1 = 2 syllables

Line 2= 4 syllables

Line 3= 6 syllables

Line 4= 8 syllables

Line 5= 2 syllables

Construct ten of these.  They are due at the end of the period.

lune

Lune

The lune is a three-line poem with a specific syllable count (3,5,3) in each line. Its format is based on the Haiku, with changes in the amount of syllables to accommodate the style of the English language. Traditionally, these poems were meant to express a simple truth, and usually incorporated nature. You may write your lunes on any topic you like. 

Please write 10 lunes. They are due at the end of the period.