Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Word Into Idea: The Four-Column Association And The Placket, Stephen W. Fried

Publications and Research

Two aleatory exercises in experimental poetry and prose for face-to-face classrooms are described step-by-step, In the first, a round-robin of word associations provides a lexicon from which first a poem and then a prose piece are generated and optionally shared. In the second, participants compile lists of rhyming words that are transferred to templates that position the rhyming words among blanks to be filled in. The sequence generates first a four-line poem from two triple rhymes, then a six-line poem from three triple rhymes and finally a ten-line poem from five quintuple rhymes. Results are shared on a voluntary basis.