Friday, September 26, 2008

Poetry Tips: Catch Phrase Poems

We all know catch-phrases and clichés so why not use them in poems much like Andy Warhol made use of pop culture in his art? You could do an Ode to Erkel with a repeating line of “Did I do that?” Perhaps old commercials like the one that said “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” You could even try to pile in all the catch-phrases and clichés that you know and see if you can line all of them up into a poem that makes sense once it is all put together. Good luck and have fun!

Thanks for checking in, please drop by again Monday…

3 comments:

Dave King said...

At the end of the day...

When all that is not rocket science has been said
and done, God will be the final cliché. Fact
of the matter is he is a God to die for, for his raft
of special measures for mankind has led
to millions going head to head to win their daily bread,
by millions more a too low profile kept,
and further millions rated last who had been least,
not to mention donkeys flogged who were long dead.
It's neither here nor there to say
that those who sing from another sheet
may live to sing another day,
may have the young and callow at their feet
or on the soul's back burner stoke
the fires without which is no smoke.

Well, you weremn't expecting Wordsworth, were you?

Poet Hound said...

Mr. King,
I think your response is a lovely surprise! Yes, absolutely, God is the final cliche'.

Dr Ian McCormick said...

I like the idea: recycling tired cliches and annoying catch phrases into poetry. I've also tried this in class, the other way round. This involves the identification or adaptation of a key phrase from a famous poem that can become its popular culture catch phrase. This happens already, to some extent, e.g. I wandered lonely as a cloud