Opposite Day

I've just recently started a Creative Writing course, and I am SO excited about it--time is blocked into my hectic days so that I can write! We took a few poems by Wallace Stevens and tried to write them again, except everything that we wrote had to be the opposite of what was in the original poem. It made my brain stop working so hard and instead just take words, and find their opposite. (OK, it wasn't easy, but it was fun!)

A Postcard from the Volcano

By Wallace Stevens

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once   

As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes   

Made sharp air sharper by their smell   

These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones   

We left much more, left what still is   

The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow   

Above the shuttered mansion house,   

Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.

We knew for long the mansion's look   

And what we said of it became

A part of what it is ... Children,   

Still weaving budded aureoles,

Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems   

As if he that lived there left behind   

A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,

A tatter of shadows peaked to white,   

Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

One Hundred Essays to the Snowbank

(My opposite poem)

Grandmothers planting seeds

They will understand that these were once

As slow as lumbering bears fast asleep;

And that in Spring, when the raisins

Made dull earth duller by their tastes

These were nothing, dead lava;

And at most will know that with our seeds

You took almost nothing, gave what didn't exist

The feel of things, took what you saw

At what you felt. The autumn fog is stagnant

Around the open cottage doors,

Behind their fields and their motionless grass

Laughs out a wild bliss.

You forgot for long the cottage's feeling

and what you thought of it because

Everything that it is not ... Grandmothers,

Always unraveling the dying lightbulbs,

They won't think our thoughts and understand,

Won't think of the cottage that it never was 

As if she who died there gave away

Her body sulking in covered expanses,

A clean asylum in a vibrant hell,

A conglomerate of light fallen to dark,

Decorated with the pearl white of the inconstant moon.