Greets all,
This thread officially starts a new AW poetry project: The Gunfighter Hollis Brown. You can call it the poetic sequel to the Blue Rock Project.
Like the Blue Rock project, the GHB collection seeks your poetic input. So let's contribute poems that share the stories of Hollis Brown, victims of his work, tales of his myth and so on, whatever you like. In the end, we want to paint a picture of his life from birth to death, and the ripple effect that he had on people's lives. (And from this point forward, I'm almost copying verbatim the William Haskins parameters from "Blue Rock" with small changes ...)
In fact, to quote Haskins: "edgar lee masters' brilliant work spoon river anthology. basically, it's a collection of poems about the people of spoon river, written from their graves. it was published in 1916, so i thought, near a century later, that it might be fun to do something similar, but updated."
So, let's write some poetry.
There is no rule that you have to write them post-mortem. The person can still be alive. Also, you don't have to write about "yourself"; you can be one townsperson and write about another.
The only rule is that you title the poem with either the subject's name or their "role" (in other words, it could be "Elmore Childs" or it could be "The Town Drunk")
There are no restrictions on form or style.
about Hollis: While I want you all to have as much freedom as possible, it's counterproductive not to have a consistent setting. So, to that end, the guy's name is Hollis Brown. He's a outlaw in the late 19th Century who steals money, kills people and robs trains. However, you can feel free to write about events before or after Hollis in the "now."
Hollis' life is neither romantic nor devoid of emotion. He whatever you will make him to be. Geography is irrelevant. So, if you want him to take a trip to New York City, that's fine. Slow boat to China? That's OK, too. All I ask is this: Gunfighter. Outlaw. Scoundrel. Human being.
So... have fun and play along if you like. if no one is interested, we can just let it fade into the archives. my feelings won't be hurt...
Finally, I'd like you to make whatever work you publish in this thread available under the Creative Commons license. If you are unfamiliar, here's a link.
I'll have my contribution later today. I'd like to see yours, too. Thanks, again, to Haskins for the inspiration.
This thread officially starts a new AW poetry project: The Gunfighter Hollis Brown. You can call it the poetic sequel to the Blue Rock Project.
Like the Blue Rock project, the GHB collection seeks your poetic input. So let's contribute poems that share the stories of Hollis Brown, victims of his work, tales of his myth and so on, whatever you like. In the end, we want to paint a picture of his life from birth to death, and the ripple effect that he had on people's lives. (And from this point forward, I'm almost copying verbatim the William Haskins parameters from "Blue Rock" with small changes ...)
In fact, to quote Haskins: "edgar lee masters' brilliant work spoon river anthology. basically, it's a collection of poems about the people of spoon river, written from their graves. it was published in 1916, so i thought, near a century later, that it might be fun to do something similar, but updated."
So, let's write some poetry.
There is no rule that you have to write them post-mortem. The person can still be alive. Also, you don't have to write about "yourself"; you can be one townsperson and write about another.
The only rule is that you title the poem with either the subject's name or their "role" (in other words, it could be "Elmore Childs" or it could be "The Town Drunk")
There are no restrictions on form or style.
about Hollis: While I want you all to have as much freedom as possible, it's counterproductive not to have a consistent setting. So, to that end, the guy's name is Hollis Brown. He's a outlaw in the late 19th Century who steals money, kills people and robs trains. However, you can feel free to write about events before or after Hollis in the "now."
Hollis' life is neither romantic nor devoid of emotion. He whatever you will make him to be. Geography is irrelevant. So, if you want him to take a trip to New York City, that's fine. Slow boat to China? That's OK, too. All I ask is this: Gunfighter. Outlaw. Scoundrel. Human being.
So... have fun and play along if you like. if no one is interested, we can just let it fade into the archives. my feelings won't be hurt...
Finally, I'd like you to make whatever work you publish in this thread available under the Creative Commons license. If you are unfamiliar, here's a link.
I'll have my contribution later today. I'd like to see yours, too. Thanks, again, to Haskins for the inspiration.
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