Select several phrases and sentences from various essays in the publication. Using these sentences and phrases (without changing them), piece together a poem. You will not be writing anything new (except a title); you will be shaping other people's language, putting the phrases together in new ways to make poetry.

Your poem does not necessarily have to rhyme or make literal sense (although it can if you want it to), but I would like to see the selected quotations working together in some interesting way. There should be energy between the borrowed phrases. The poem should feel like a coherent whole, not just a random list of sentences.

Type your title.

Under the title, type the words:

"orchestrated by" or: "arranged by" or: "choreographedby" or: "designed by" (or come up with your own phrase for what you have done; since you're not writing the words so much as placing them, your phrase should reflect that fact) and then type your name. Under the title and your name, type your poem. Be sure to keep it under a page.

Citing your sources

When using other people's words, it's important to give them credit. At the bottom of your page, type the phrase: "Works cited:"

After the colon, type (in the order you used them) the last names of the authors of each phrase used, followed by the page number on which the phrase appeared. Separate each reference with a semicolon.

Separate the references from each line (of your poem) with a slash. So, for example, for a four-line poem, your "Works cited" list would look something like this:

Works cited: Anderson 57; Martinez 24; Rabinowitz 18 / Yoshimura 45 / Braddock 107; Finch 52 / Shaffer 15; Crowley 7

Collaboration

I encourage you to join forces with a classmate or cross-classmate, and craft a poem together.

Congratulations! You're a poet. (Note: the University cannot be held responsible for any resulting depression or anti-social behavior.)

Handout developed by Kate Dionne, Mary Reda, and Greg Tulonen