Tuesday, February 5, 2013

~ The Monostich, The Stand Alone Poem ~

~ Introducing the Monostich~ 
~ a self-contained, stand-alone poem entailing a single line, it can also be inserted into a poem as a device. Many see Monostich poetry and think that writing one line is easy, or that no real effort goes into it. Those who think this are wrong or have never written a Monostich before ~



I was first given the task of writing a Monostich for an online writing group I belong to, this proved to be a great challenge for me. In the two part exercise we each submitted our individual Monostich, we were then given the title from another group members Monostich, which we had to write a Monostich based on their title. At the end of the exercise the completed Monostich's were posted and it was amazing to see how some of the Monostich's came together to form a couplet, and you would never know they were written separately. In some cases it was interesting to see the meaning that two people came up based on a title. It was an interesting and challenging exercise.   .


This first Monostich The Devil’s Dance is my piece, the 1st line is written by myself and the 2nd line is written by a member in our group named Catherine (last names is omitted)  


The Devil’s Dance
The devil danced the darkness into your soul (K@tes)
These hot orange tendrils caress the coal (Catherine A.)

This second Monostich A Burnt Candle is by a Group member by the name of Serena C, with the title and first line being hers, and the second line written by me 

A Burnt Candle:
Death is the wisp of smoke that rises from the blackened wick. (Serena C)
Strike a match and feel me burn down to my fire.  (K@tes)


One thing leads to another, the Monostich is a one line stand alone piece. And if you are familiar with poetry can lead into the more well known form of poetry the Haiku, which will be my next post! I hope you enjoyed these Monostich's as much as I have enjoyed writing them! 
Much love, 
Kates






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