Here’s another one of those exercises called “warm ups” – pick one noun/verb phrase and try to write (really fast, without lifting your pen from the paper) a paragraph in which every sentence begins with your chosen phrase. Here’s one I wrote, starting with “I know …” 

I know that the sixties are not dead but Nixon is. I know that Queen Elizabeth I died a virgin and that Dian Fossey died a hero. I know that Ernest Hemingway was afraid of women and that he wrote like an angel. I know that Marilyn Monroe was sad all the days of her life and that no man cared as long as her voice was as soft as her breasts. I know that evil is not dark and goodness is not light, and that they both are shapeshifters whose purpose is to deepen our minds. I know the spiral of fear and the sinkhole of despair, and I know the numbing boredom of the artist concentration camp when you deny the truth of who you are. I know that if you take sides you must take prisoners too.

(Note: The edited and expanded version of the above warm up can be found in my book, Eating Mythos Soup: poemstories for Laura. Yet another proof that these exercises are practical and can turn into “real” writing.)

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