Still Trying Those Tryouts: It’s Tuesday

8:58 a.m. — Walnut Creek

Hello, all. We are playing with diamantes today… Wow! It’s dangerous to get distracted by another tab. I forgot I was writing this. Ahem! Diamantes, but I want you to take your diamantes another step, or two. Think of the diamante as a diamond in the rough, and your final poem as polished, even if it no longer looks like a diamond.

I have a template and then I shall go through the terms, and then I shall give you an example. First, you need to collect some nouns and come up with their opposites.You can use complete opposites: fire and ice, mountain and valley, cat and dog; or, you can work with an evolution: kitten and cat, but that’s not quite as easy. An interesting possibility is to place people at either end. A friend of mine wrote a diamante where she placed me and herself at opposites. It might be fun to place historical figures against each other…

A Seven-Line Diamante

_______________
(subject noun)

_______________     _______________
(adjectives)

_______________     _______________     _______________
(participles)

_______________     _______________     _______________     _______________
(nouns related to the subject which begin to shift meaning)

_______________     _______________     _______________
(participles indicating change toward a new subject)

_______________     _______________
(adjectives continuing the idea of change)

_______________
(noun, opposite of subject)

Line 1:         Noun, the opposite of Line 7                                     noun: a person, place, or thing
Line 2:         2 adjectives describing the noun in Line 1                  adjective: word that describes a noun
Line 3:         3 verbs ending in –ing related to Line 1                       verb: action word + ing = gerund
Line 4:         2 nouns about Line 1 and 2 nouns about Line 7          begin shift towards end noun
Line 5:         3 verbs ending in –ing related to Line 7
Line 6:         2 adjectives describing Line 7
Line 7:         Noun, the opposite of Line 1

Example:

moon
chaste untouched
waxing waning spinning
awake asleep asleep awake
blazing renewing burning
fiery untouchable
sun

I know, my middle line of nouns are suspect, but, it works.

Possibilities after playing with original:

Moon Sun
chaste    burning
untouched    untouchable
waxing the skies    renewing life
with waning night    from fiery ashes
spinning lives    blazing phoenix
a sleeping    a waking
a waking…    a sleeping…
blazing phoenix    spinning lives
from fiery ashes    with waning night
renewing life    waxing the skies
untouchable    untouched
burning    chaste
Sun     Moon

Once you start evolving the poem, all bets are off as far as the parts of speech. Take the poem where it wants to go. It does not have to be even recognisably from the diamante. If you do the step further, post both your diamante and the evolved poem. Otherwise we shall enjoy your diamante[s]. New diamantes, yes? Not last year’s. Umhm, I know what you were thinking those who were here. WordPress people, there is a centre align icon amongst the other icons; Blogger people, I am not sure about formatting for you.

Go forth and collect pairs and play. I will see you Friday for the Freeforall; and, Tuesday for the next topic, which I believe is wintry in nature.

Happy writing, all.