The Grab Bag

As much as I "preach" about keeping poetry contemporary, I have only briefly touched on my own personal way of doing this. With the addition of the Grab Bag feature, I hope to bring my own idea of contemporary poetics to the forefront.....and I'm going to use a game to do it! As a fan both of games and poetry, mixing the two seemed like a good idea. Thus the Grab Bag came into existence. I order to understand what I am talking about see the below list of questions that would probably be asked frequently if someone ever bothered to ask me questions (or FAQISEBTAMQ).

Q: First of all: what is it?
A: The grab bag is an interactive way to write poetry online using commercial lines as inspiration. I call these poems which incorporate commercials "Collages" because like your typical macaroni/magazine cutout collage from grade school this piece uses "stuff" you came up with and "stuff" someone else came up with.

Q: How do I play?
A: Well there a lot of different options, I'm glad you asked! Here are the "procedures of play" 1. Click on the link at the bottom of this post and do not freak out when a new window
opens.
2. Watch in amazement as the grab bag spills out one or two lines from a commercial
3. In the comment box, write a short, long, silly, serious, nonsense, rhetorical, ironic,analytical, basically awesome poem and post it.
4. At the end of the week, the best poems will be displayed in the Showcase section.
(Coming soon) so stop back and check to see if yours made it to the top!

Q: So how is this a game exactly?
A: OK so maybe not so much of a game, but it is a fun way to find some inspiration, something every poet could do with, or try something new right? Also, since the commercials change every week, you can always keep challenging yourself...who knows you could be the first person to write a book of collage poems!

Ok if there any other questions feel free to comment and I will respond.

I have included here two different "forms" that I think might work well with these commercial lines, try one or all three!

1. Five word weave: pick five words (or if the lines are only five words long, use all five)and try to repeat them as many times as possible in new ways. For example, if one ofthe words is “gone” you could say “Gone are the days of the father’s faces” or youcould say “Gone as a goose” The word can mean, dead or it can mean something thatis no longer around.

2. ABC poem: try and write a poem where each line starts off with a letter of the alphabet. Use the words given for the lines that correspond to their letters. For
example, if “gone” was one of the words, it would appear in the “G” line of the poem.

Here's the link, happy writing all!

http://students.otterbein.edu/rachel.scali/grabbag.html