Engl 10203, Intro to Creative Writing
Williams, Spring 2011

Poetry, Turning Phrases into Lines

Below are three short poems written as sentences and phrases. Break them up into lines, and see how close you can come to the original poet’s version.


In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, who, squatting upon the ground, held his heart in his hands, and ate of it. I said, “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered; “But I like it because it is bitter and because it is my heart.”
--Stephen Crane, untitled


Let us go then you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming questions . . . .Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room women come and go talking of Michelangelo.
--T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (first section only)


The penny candy store beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom of that september afternoon. A cat upon the counter moved among the licorice sticks and tootsie rolls and Oh Boy Gum. Outside the leaves were falling as they died. A wind had blown away the sun. A girl ran in. Her hair was rainy. Her breasts were breathless in the little room. Outside the leaves were falling and they cried Too soon! Too soon!
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “The pennycandystore beyond the El”