Color Poem Assignment

Color Poem Assignment

Write a 20-line poem using a color.  DO NOT RHYME.  Complete the brainstorm first and then follow the example.  Assignment must be  handed in typed, using Times New Roman or Calibri, 10-12 point font, and standard margins.  Assignment must include the standard heading in the left-hand corner with your name, teacher’s name, class and period, and date.  10% will be deducted for not following these specific instructions.  10 points extra credit will be given for turning in the brainstorm (also typed) with the assignment.

Brainstorm

For each of the following list at least FIVE in your journal:

List 1: What things LOOK (your color)?

List 2: What things SOUND (your color)?

List 3: What things SMELL (your color)?

List 4: How does (your color) FEEL?

List 5: What makes YOU FEEL (your color)?

List 6: What things TASTE (your color)?

List 7: What EXPERIENCES or IDEAS seem (your color)?

List 8: Can you think of any (your color) PLACES?

Example:

1.      middle of the night, bats, Santa’s boots, Johnny Depp’s goatee, missionaries shoes, dinner party dress and shiny pumps

2.      wind, silence, quiet sobbing, empty room, big cold forest

3.      burnt toast, diesel exhaust, campfire smoke, new rubber tires, permanent marker

4.      depressed, lonely, blank, without friends, classy, evil, sophisticated, shivering

5.      an empty house when I come home, debt, temper tantrums (mine or others), funerals, problems that don’t seem to have a solution

6.      black tie mousse cake, very dark chocolate, licorice, burnt toast, the bottom of the spaghetti sauce pan that I left on the stove and forgot.

7.      the time between my sister’s death and her funeral, Halloween, depression, Gothic, black tie affairs

8.      cemetery, caves, formal dinner and dance, Edgar Allen Poe’s house, anywhere you are reading Wuthering Heights – shiver.

Now look at your brainstorming list and select the ideas that make the strongest comparison for each sense. Use each of these ideas to create the lines of your color poem.

Your poem should be at least 20 lines long.  You will be graded on original ideas and form, so be sure to think past the obvious things that are your color and be sure to vary the beginning of each line of the poem.

(Sample)

Black

It’s the color of three o’clock,

when only the insomniacs are up

surfing the abyss of the web

musing over tints in Johnny Depp’s goatee,

and shades of sleek party dresses and

shiny pumps

made for a Hollywood runway,

not this lonely shade of night.

It’s the smell of permanent marker –

overwhelmingly reminding you of

the empty house

after the yard sale posters

are stuffed into the outside garbage can

along with memories

of the friends you are

leaving behind.

It’s the feeling between

“Time of death: six fifty-seven, Tuesday”

and the burnt funeral potatoes

that were supposed to somehow

soften the fact that your afternoon

was spent in a blur at her graveside

and you are suddenly not afraid of ghosts

but longing for a glimpse of one.

It’s the silence

of a blank Christmas morning

when Santa’s boots only

conjure images of coal

and all the well wishes in the world

leave a hole, empty,

filling you with voiceless sobbing

and the Color of Black.