Lesson 5 – Assignment

Assignment:  Read through my list of place-names, and choose one that interests you. Develop your responses into a poem of twenty-five lines.  (I chose the name Bronte, Sicily.  I became fascinated by the idea of two Bronte’s.  I used the chain verse method of last word in the line is the first word(s) in the next line.)

Bronte/Brontë
A literary tale connected by a surname,
A surname of four beings united.
United together in more than letters,
Letters arranged and tragic lives combined;
Combined to create this story.

This story begins with a Cyclops, Bronte.
Bronte is part of brothers three,
Three Titan children victorious in a battle.
A battle won with weapons forged.
Forged beneath a smoldering volcano.

Volcano belches flume and fire.
Fire rises from a Sicilian mountain.
Mountain forever contains Bronte’s swords;
Swords fashioned into lasting weapon –
Weapon more mighty than a pen.

A Pen moves across holy, paper altar,
Altar of pastor father, poor and desolate.
Desolate despair over cyclical family deaths.
Deaths shutting out mortality, but for breath –
Breath of fire into fictitious giants – sisters.

Sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne, bonded.
Bonded with poverty’s dearth, but rich in words.
Words birthed from a need to escape.
Escape into luminous illusions created.
Created for our lasting amusement.