Someone gave me the Rime of the Ancient Mariner for Christmas (just a pretty, old, thin, leather bound copy), and, as I was reading through it, I was reminded of some challenge fics I wrote for M7 a long time ago. M7 had this great monthly challenge site (started and maintained by the awesome NotTasha), and one month we were challenged to write a fic inspired by a poem or from a line of a poem -- and I ended up writing four of them. I really loved that challenge (clearly! LOL!), and wondered if I could do it in SGA.
So, I rapidly wrote a short ficlet this morning using the famous "Water, Water, everywhere" line from Coleridge's poem, which I'll post it in the next entry after this.
Anyway, after writing it, I thought -- why not see if anyone else wants to try? So, I'm throwing down a gauntlet, to whomever may feel inspired by it, to take a poem, any poem, and see if you can write a fic inspired by it. It can be anything -- from Shakespeare to Ogden Nash or even one you wrote -- and the fic can be of any genre, any style, and any length. I suggest trying to keep it short, but you definitely don't have to. All I ask is that you let me know that you've written it and include a link in the comments to this post, so I can read it. <bg> Oh -- and you don't have to include the poem in the post -- just say the author's name, title of the poem, and, if available, where it can be read on the web. That'd be cool. That's it! Probably no one will take me up on this, but what the heck. Thought I'd try.
Some sites to help you look for poems and stuff:
Bartleby's -- this site has books, poems, anthologies, treaties, quotes, etc. Click Here and it will take you to the "Verse" site.
Also, if you want to see how others did this challenge over in M7, go here: M7 Challenge Site and scroll down to "The March 2003 Challenge (the Poem Challenge)" offered by Beth)
And, if you want to see what I wrote -- just click the next entry button.
Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hannukah!
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Comments
Oh goddamnit. I really need to write and complete a story. Maybe this'll do it. I loved that poetry challenge.
Onward to your fic! You picked a good one too -- I love me some Coleridge.
(P.S. thank you for the little rubber stoat!)
I'll get her started.
There was a young man from Nantuckett...
There was a young man from Nantucket
Who went through the Gate with a bucket
T'was full of molasses
Well, dropped, they all fell on their asses
which necessitated a visit from Beckett
I always wondered how that Nantuckett thing ended...
When I heard the learned astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.
Once again, you two share the SAME BRAIN.
Now I need to find a poem with lots of explosions. Or a nice tranquil poem that could benefit from the addition of some explosions. Something from Emily Dickinson, perhaps?
"There is another sky/Ever serene and fair/KABOOM!!"
by Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
(First World War poems always stagger me - Wilfred Owen, Sigfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke...them lot. Tear me to pieces)
Weird thing? The guy who wrote it never served in combat. Worked in an air traffic control for the Army air corps, stateside, during the war.
Self-Destroyers
By Miles Tomalin
Load upon load of bomb and shell
Shakes down the brick and stone and dust,
But what does all this ruin spell
When only brick and stone are crushed?
Beneath your storm of steel the town
Shivers, and sinks slowly down,
And you believe that hearts lie deep
With homes under the rubble heap!
Your loss is greater than your gain;
Men whose homes are here no longer
Spread the fever of their anger
Through the length and breadth of Spain.
A million hearts you have made stronger,
You have armed a million men.
What you destroy, shatter burn,
Are not the things that in their turn
Will strike you and your cannons dumb,
Is not the spirit in whose name
We built an army, and defied
Your steel, your thunder and your flame:
These cannot die till we have died.
You understand so little. You
Have more than walls to batter through -
Men
Such as your brutish heroes never knew
the way to overcome.
I used the poem "paradox" By Jessie B. Rittenhouse. You can find it here:
http://www.bartleby.com/104/86.html
Just the first stanza...the first line really started the whole thing though. Its a Carson fic, short...really short but you can find it on my live journal:)
*strokes chin*
Because I haven't enough plot bunnies hopping all over my desktop....
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3317367/1/
I should start collecting these, huh.
You can read it in my lj, or at ff.net, if you're bored.