3by3by3 Poetry
Betty Ford blinked, lucky her, tears role.
Voting soon began with cardiovascular anticipation.
Counting stoic countdown, marriage, became old.
Moderate physicians officially called mortality old.
Bush in internal confusion changes his filtered role.
Next House hypertensive from regime change anticipation.
Yet men just blitz their emotional stopwatch anticipation,
To risk change, address alcoholic drinks. Cathedral old
Washington diagnosed to end, its service a memorial role.
–Scott Rettberg
I just contributed the above poem to Lance Newman’s 3by3by3, an excellent constrained writing, Google-driven poetry project. The constraint of the project is as follows: Pick 3 stories from Google News. Using only words that occur in the first few paragraphs of each story, make a poem with 3 stanzas, 3 lines each, no more than 60 characters per line. The 3-word title should use a word from each story.
On the same newsday that your 3 stories were published, send your poem to 3by3by3blog (at) gmail (dot) com. Include links to your 3 stories. The above is a “wee sestina.”
In addition, Newman suggests “Blue Plate Specials,” additional constraints for each day of the week.