One night, I said his name upon the strand,

But went the waves and muddied it nearby:

Again, I erased it with a second toe. But went the tide and made pleasure a predator.

‘Modest woman,’ said he, ‘that does not in modesty concede,

An immortal thing to mortalize.’

For I myself shall flee from this recovery,

and withhold my name, be it wiped out otherwise.

© 2023 | K. Hartless

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 Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite. For example, you might turn “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” to “I won’t contrast you with a winter’s night.” Your first draft of this kind of “opposite” poem will likely need a little polishing, but this is a fun way to respond to a poem you like, while also learning how that poem’s rhetorical strategies really work. (It’s sort of like taking a radio apart and putting it back together, but for poetry).

Happy writing!

My inspiration:

Edmund Spenser, from Amoretti LXXV.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
‘Vain man,’ said she, ‘that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.’

This is one of the earliest sonnet sequences written in English, in the mid-1580s .