Slice of Life - Book Spine Poems

I've been participating in Slice of Life, started by Two Writing Teachers. I love the challenge of composing a piece of writing at least once a week about life or teaching.
 

 

My daughter is taking a creative writing course, and she sends me the cool things she does in class.  I loved this one...book spine poems!  This "writing" excercise is new to me, but I discovered this is not new to others.  Scope Notes has a whole slew of them.  The idea is to gather books for their titles, stack them in just the right order, and voila!  Here is her example (I took the liberty to write it out, making my own choices in capitalization and punctuation - she may have written it differently):

 

Godless

 

A devil is waiting

The Dream Stalker

Hand of evil

Sleeping with fear

Entombed

Shattered

Bones to ashes

I remember nothing

Until I find You.

 

Here is mine:

 

Song Yet Sung

 

The given day

I know this much is true

A tree grows in Brooklyn

Milk glass moon

The lake of dreams

The light between oceans

and the mountains echoed

A thousand splendid suns

A Year of Wonders.

 

 

The interesting this is that I revised this a few times, stacking and restacking.  I could also play with the punctuation once it's written down.  I could add/change words:

 

A Song Yet Song

 

Any given day,

I know this much is true;

a tree grows in Brooklyn

under a milk glass moon.

A lake of dreams

and a light between the oceans

make the mountains echo.

Splendid suns make

a thousand years of wonder.

 

 I felt like it was slightly addicting!  I could play around with the books around my house or classroom and stack them all in poems!  I think students would love this since it's nonthreatening, but still creative.  It would be a good exercise in choosing theme topics or titles and sticking with mood/tone/subject.  It's an easy way to teach line breaks and how to make choices in punctuation, capitalization, and shape. 
 

Try it!