Wednesday, April 04, 2007

You provide the details, I'll provide the devil

Blogger informs me that this is my 666th post on 2x3x7.

*fiendish laughter*

To mark this important occasion, and seeing as it's National Poetry Month, let's try an experiment. You provide the title / first line of a poem you want written (just type it into the comments space of this post) and I'll write it.

Feel free to specify a verse form if there's a particular one you'd like. If you want a translation, mail me the original, along with a literal translation if it's any language other than Hindi / Urdu, and I'm happy to do that too. I'm also willing to take requests for poems in the style of a particular poet, as long as it's someone reasonably well known (no, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex does NOT count).

Only one request per person please, and requests by anony-mice will be ignored, unless they happen to catch my fancy.

I'll undertake anything as long as it's reasonable (requests for haikus starting with a 18 syllable first line will be ignored, as will requests for translations of Dante's Inferno or an epic poem in 15 cantos on the theme: 'Who framed Beowulf'?). I don't promise that it'll be particularly good poetry - it's more likely to be doggerel (especially if you specify a verse form) - but, as Browning puts it "What if I fail of my purpose here/ 'It is but to keep the nerves at strain".

I'm waiting.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The Splog who liked to Blog" - in the style of Dr. Seuss. :)
hatshepsut

Heh Heh said...

How about something on a cheesy high school crush, but written in the style of The Wasteland? Extra points for using all the languages Eliot does. Need not be that long, of course.

Anonymous said...

"Are you there ?"

csm said...

nashaa ...

a la kabir.

1 word for a 2 line couplet is fair given the proportion of 1 line for poem :-)

Anonymous said...

"Ask me if I'm happy"

Shirsha said...

"The pussy cat"
And it must be all adult humor types, like Roald Dahl!

kevin said...

"When dinosaur met king kong, it brought up the big bong (bang)"

yeah i kno..am not good at rhymes...bt still...thts one line to start ur poem

The ramblings of a shoe fiend said...

Are you there God? It's me Falstaff

(full of teen angst please. You can remember that far back right?)

Igirit said...

I loved a blogger, but knew not his name.
Emily Dickinson.

Anonymous said...

There's a hornet's nest inside the slab
:D Sorry, but there was.
And I wanted to write an ode to it, but this offer is just too good to resist.

tangled said...

it isn't an 'ornet's nest, is it?

Space Bar said...

oh, goody. i'm the 13th person here, whihc is very apt, considering the nature of your post, and my prompt.

here goes:

please to do sestina, with the following words: nameless, circle, hours, freeze, reprieve, numbers.

if you feel like making life difficult for yourself, you could make it a canzone, with 12 lines a stanza, each word repeated twice in a mirror form; and twice in the envoi as well, in any way you like (as in, same two words two lines in a row, or mirrored as in the rest of the poem).

Revealed said...

I have one, I have one.

squishy soaked shoes

Gerald Manley, please :D

Anonymous said...

1. A polyphonic poem. Something Glenn Gould could play.

2. An inspirational poem for struggling PhD graduates. It must be good enough to be set to rousing music and must have a good chorus such as "Rise ye scholars, Your Main effects await" or some such.

n!

are you taking requests from anonymice?

Anonymous said...

In the spirit of 666

My request:

"The Grim Reaper"


:D

Supremus

Anonymous said...

A comic poem with first line: "What is life but suicide at snail's pace?"

The Black Mamba said...

"Mandatum novum"

haiku

Tabula Rasa said...

talkin' blog mountain comment massacre blues
- early dylan / woody guthrie

(damn i got in on this late)

Revealed said...

Sheesh! r*

magicrna said...

1.Ode to an old/lived-in/soon-to-be-demolished house
a la Grey's elegy
or
2. "Broken umbrella" a la "stinky cat" by Phoebe Buffet of Friends

bharath said...

I am dead and my dog lives on
even her bitch is dead by the pond

any style ...

Anonymous said...

Can you write a poem that starts with
"I write crap that rhymes ..."

Chronicus Skepticus said...

If it's not too late, something on the lines of Song of Perfect Propriety, on you (i.e Falstaff)?

And 666 posts? In what, two years?

*bows down low*

I don't know *how* you do it!

jj said...

copying from my comment on the other post

tark, tark-e-muhabbat, tark-e-havas, tark-e-vafaa, khayaal-e-tark,..... :D take ur pick!

dazedandconfused said...

I don't have a first line, just a title. How about-

"When I fell in love with Paris Hilton"

Nishant Neeraj said...

What about a poem on

'Men with single eye, tied hands
and no mouth;
See everything but no dimmension
tries but no shout.'

(hehe, you can see I can't be poetic)

I would like it in Pink Floyd eshtyle :) [if you don't hate Pink Floyd]

-Naishe

Anonymous said...

Too late, and too trite, but what about 'If' - advice for a blogger?

Anonymous said...

I chanced upon this 'aap ki farmaish' only now. It is a nice idea!

I would love to have your take on "Being God ain't easy”

Amethyst