Day 18
Deconstructing Cliches
by Bear
Susan Browne taught me you have to uncliche a cliche.
And since I have often enjoyed listing cliches in my poems I thought why not work with that as a prompt?
So follow the link:
http://www.westegg.com/cliche/random.cgi
You should see 10 random cliches before you. Now, you have two choices.
1. Take one of these cliches and use it as the title of your poem and then examine that cliche looking up the origins of that saying or questioning it.
For example with "Not enough room to swing a cat" some questions to ask before writing the poem might be:
How much room does one need to swing a cat?What kind of cat are you swinging?
Why are we swinging a cat at all?
Why is the cat letting us swing it?
Another example is "The road to nowhere" and some questions to ask before writing the poem might be:
Isn't nowhere still somewhere?
Where is the road going? To the middle of nowhere?
Where is this road located?
Who is on it?
What is on the side of the road?
2. Use all 10 cliches in your poem to illustrate some larger idea about the human condition.
