This Trifextra weekend prompt isn’t so much a writing challenge; it’s more of a reading challenge. They want us to scour through our favorite pieces of literature and give the best 33 words we can find.
Guidelines:
The writing you choose should not be your own.
- The 33 words should be lifted directly from another source (i.e. don’t take 33 random words from Macbeth and shake them into a poem of your own (though that would be an awesome idea for another challenge) and don’t take a sentence from the beginning of a book and another from the end–keep the original order).
- Credit your sources.
What wild ecstasy?
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Step forward,
To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle
Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle.
This is part of a cento poem written by Alison Chisholm, commissioned for a trailer for the BBC 2 television station. I was so impressed on first hearing it, read by actor Peter Capaldi, that I searched until I found the whole text, contacted the poet for the source poems and then printed them all out to savour. Last week was a great poetic wallow, and if anyone wants the full text and sources they can email me. I’ve been wanting an excuse to blog about this amazing happening!
You can read an exclusive blog by Alison Chisholm at the BBC -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/abouttheb…rating-BBC-Two
How nice-love the sing song quality of this quote:-)
Very cool. And I love the idea of “stolen poetry.”
I always have the uncomfortable feeling that I am stealing when I try to write cento poetry. I think all the dead poets would applaud Alison for hers.
Oooh! That’s good! That runs hot off the page! 10/10 for that!
Such a great and fun passage (: I love it.
I always loved “we are the dreamers of dreams”
This is good! I had not heard of this writer before…
I was going to say Willie Wanka. Where he says, “We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams . . .” which he borrowed from ODE by English poet Arthur O’Shaughnessy which I would have never known without help from my brain Google! HA! A beautiful quote Viv. Nice choice!
Dreamers of dreams. What a wonderful thought.
Is that Keats to start? I can’t place it.
You should never need an excuse to blog – you should just do it
Well spotted: It’s Keats’s On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
Ah! Thanks
#whoops, bum steer: the Keats is what opens the cento. The words I quoted are:
What wild ecstasy? Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, then 2 lines from O’Shaughnessy’s The Music Makers; ‘step forward’ from Interlude by Walter Savage Lander, and the last two lines are from a fragment by Shelley.