Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 09:23:01 -0400 From: tongue in cheek? a bit! Subject: [WRITERS] EXERCISE: Is the Glass Half... [For those of you who looked fast Wednesday night, you probably found that tink hadn't quite managed to get the Web page done in time. But I think if you look at http://web.mit.edu/mbarker/www/summer98/summer.html today - - now! -- it should be working correctly. Sometimes we get ahead ourselves :-)] So the summer writing contest for June is to write a poem around the theme glass. Ah but there breaks a pain, for which glass are we to consider? For example you could pick a number from one to six: 1. Drinking glass 2. Eye glass 3. A hard brittle substance (as used in windows), usually transparent 4. A barometer (the ship's glass that warns of storm or doldrums?) 5. Broken glass -- that has such shards and splinters in it? 6. The glass that separates the haves from the have-nots, that glazes the unseeing eye? Did you pick your number? So you now have a kind of glass, right? Write the word glass in the middle of a sheet of paper. Around that, put some words that bubble up for you. Maybe they are words with special meanings for you, words that you like the sound of, or just some words that you want to try playing with. Now let the glass (the particular kind of glass that you are worrying about, whether it's ancient blue glass from a ghost town or the almost invisible sliver of contact lens) rub up against those words. Spin the glass wool into threads, sweep up the splinters, and listen to the shining of the glass. Did I see the glint of sunshine on a far away window flash in your eyes? Or was a rainbow refracting through your glass? Or just the squeek of cleanliness? In case you haven't realized it, you should be thinking about a poem on glass! Well, not literally upon glass -- although engraving poetry on glass could preserve it -- and I suppose some people might think of the glass fiber in the network or silicon chips or even the glassy eye of the monitor as one way that poetry might be on glass? -- I think I've lost total control of this sentence, incidentally. Anyway, write about glass. tink