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What Color is Your Challenge?

Angeline

Angeline

Poet Chick
Joined
Mar 11, 2002
Posts
27,054
Now that I'm back from my refreshing break I've been thinking about the use of color in poems. Mr. Twelve commented (here) that he used the word "cerulean" in reference to the sky and that he did so sarcastically. Well he's a sarcastic kinda guy but he'd never condemn any specific word, I believe, just a wrong word: a word wrong for context or meaning in a poem. And this of course made me want to write a poem that uses "cerulean" in what I'd hope would be a right way.

Do you ever consciously either write about color or try to use color in a way that promotes what you're trying to do in a poem? I have, a few times, though I seem mostly attracted to the influence of sound.

Here is a challenge: Write a poem that uses at least three colors to support or enhance whatever you're writing about. You may not use the word "color" in the poem. And you can't use whatever colors you pick to modify another word, i.e., like an adjective. So "a cerulean sky" or "brown leaves" would not be ok. Yes, that last rule makes it a bit harder. But that's the fun of a challenge!

I'm about to work on one and I'll post it soon.

Oh form or vers libre is fine as are illustrated poems. So c'mon you poets and lurkers. We know you're out there. Give it a try. You get to pick your favorite colors!
 
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At the dawn fair cerulean breaks
fast piercing the gray with citrine

while silver curls foamy below
racing out past the aquamarine

scattering damp eternal returns
meager leavings of shell and grain

and we far above lay afield
forested ochre green on the plain

seeded now in the umber fecund
opalescence on dew-beaded skin

awakened with birdsong the slim
dappled yellows the haven of limbs
 
Here is an amazing (to me) color poem: Brown by smithpeter. If you're here and you haven't read his poems, you should.
 
Angeline said:
At the dawn fair cerulean breaks
fast piercing the gray with citrine

...

seeded now in the umber fecund
opalescence on dew-beaded skin

awakened with birdsong the slim
dappled yellows the haven of limbs
Click to expand...

I read the instructions and was a bit confused and was thinking of a reply but then I got lazy and read the next post. What could be clearer?

When you make a point ... there's nothing like excess. I count nine colours (ten if you stretch it with opalescent).

Not fair! You took all the good crayons.

We live in grey and sordid times. Too much colour causes ... well exuberance and that leads to ... well I'm told it isn't pleasant. Is beetroot a colour? Hmmmn ...


::
 
darkmaas said:
I read the instructions and was a bit confused and was thinking of a reply but then I got lazy and read the next post. What could be clearer?

When you make a point ... there's nothing like excess. I count nine colours (ten if you stretch it with opalescent).

Not fair! You took all the good crayons.

We live in grey and sordid times. Too much colour causes ... well exuberance and that leads to ... well I'm told it isn't pleasant. Is beetroot a colour? Hmmmn ...


::
Click to expand...

Well I wasn't trying to be a show-off. Really. I just wanted to see if I could do it. Anyway I think my poem is rather twee. It doesn't say much of anything although it says it colorfully.

Smithpeter's Brown poem is a much better example.

Maybe the part about not using colors to modify words makes it too difficult but I was trying to help people avoid cliche. Put a color in a direct modifier position and you get er, Green Eggs and Ham.

Otoh, Noam Chomsky once wrote the following sentence:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

So one can do it and totally avoid cliche.

Well maybe people should just write poems that somehow employ color. I'm easy. Anyway I personally never follow the rules if I think they'll mess up my poem. Ahem.

And I did not either use all the good colors! Vermillion? Chartreuse? Puce? I brought the big box of crayons, dang it!

crayola_bigboxofcrayons.jpg



PS I try not to think about beets as I believe you know.
 
Georgian Bay Sunset

I will try not to use tired jaundice
or hem my thoughts with prose-tinted
violet, but instead linger on fuchia
limning distant vermillion,
over the bay that serenely coos
in dove grey beyond the wharf;
where statues dressed in verdigris
look solemn, and their lonely gaze
lingers on silvered magenta puffing
a last cigarette before bed.
 
champagne1982 said:
Georgian Bay Sunset

I will try not to use tired jaundice
or hem my thoughts with prose-tinted
violet, but instead linger on fuchia
limning distant vermillion,
over the bay that serenely coos
in dove grey beyond the wharf;
where statues dressed in verdigris
look solemn, and their lonely gaze
lingers on silvered magenta puffing
a last cigarette before bed.
Click to expand...
dove grey
darkmaas?
she just did what i said, direct support of something else
 
twelveoone said:
dove grey
darkmaas?
she just did what i said, direct support of something else
Click to expand...

Seems ol' d'maas is the arbiter of taste on things grey. There must be fifty shades of grey. What can I say?

Seems the rules preclude using the colour to modify a noun but nothing about a noun modifying the colour. I suspect Champers is testing loopholes. Canadians are like that. All "please and thank you, but ..."

Contextually she might have resorted to battleship grey which is similar, but being a prairie gal, she might not be aware of that. It kinda messes with the meter as well ... I digress.

I might take umbrage with verdigris which is actually copper carbonate (or alternately copper acetate or basic copper chloride if near the sea), and in the context might not be a colour but rather the patina on the statue. (Again, pushing limits?) That would be churlish of me.

::
 
darkmaas said:
Seems ol' d'maas is the arbiter of taste on things grey. There must be fifty shades of grey. What can I say?

Seems the rules preclude using the colour to modify a noun but nothing about a noun modifying the colour. I suspect Champers is testing loopholes. Canadians are like that. All "please and thank you, but ..."

Contextually she might have resorted to battleship grey which is similar, but being a prairie gal, she might not be aware of that. It kinda messes with the meter as well ... I digress.

I might take umbrage with verdigris which is actually copper carbonate (or alternately copper acetate or basic copper chloride if near the sea), and in the context might not be a colour but rather the patina on the statue. (Again, pushing limits?) That would be churlish of me.

::
Click to expand...
Well umbrage or not, I just couldn't come up with a colour name for that particular shade of seagull poop, verdigris seemed a safer bet.

The only ships I saw docked at Depot Harbour were all oil tanker black and beige or coast guard red. Consider dove... not as a bird but instead as what birds do into a wave. I liked the ambiguity.

:kiss:

eta: p.s. D'maas I merely live in the boreal forest/parkland of Alberta, I grew up in Parry Sound.
 
Last edited:
champagne1982 said:
Well umbrage or not, I just couldn't come up with a colour name for that particular shade of seagull poop, verdigris seemed a safer bet.

The only ships I saw docked at Depot Harbour were all oil tanker black and beige or coast guard red. Consider dove... not as a bird but instead as what birds do into a wave. I liked the ambiguity.

:kiss:
Click to expand...

well i liked it too, but i heard the coos
 
:kiss:

eta: p.s. D'maas I merely live in the boreal forest/parkland of Alberta, I grew up in Parry Sound.
Click to expand...

Another mental image - poof ... <tottering off to watch Heartland>

Next you'll be claiming that that's a stand-in butt in your AV that my AV seems to be eyeing ... er ... suspiciously.
 
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Angeline said:
Otoh, Noam Chomsky once wrote the following sentence:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

So one can do it and totally avoid cliche.
Click to expand...
And meaning. Chomsky purposefully constructed a grammatically coherent sentence that was meaningless.

Which, though, probably describes much of modern poetry.
 
Tzara said:
And meaning. Chomsky purposefully constructed a grammatically coherent sentence that was meaningless.

Which, though, probably describes much of modern poetry.
Click to expand...

Long, long ago I took a class in transformational grammar. I didn't think then about Chomsky's ideas about the structure underlying lines in relation to poetry, but I do these days,

Maybe you'll join me and Champ (and others, I hope) in putting some poetry up? I was thinking that something ekphrastic fantastic might inspire another poem in me. We'll see.

:rose:
 
moonstruck

torn awake with tremors of a black dreary
to something just as bleak, more clinical than not.
i try to remember this isn't home, but it's been
sixty-six days with many more left to pass.
after night comes light and it is then a vast blue
through a small window brings the sun. its rays
leave a pool where cats and i are drawn.
this yellow is a better memory minder than pills,
making a dreaded remainder a bearable fight.
 
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a wondrous thread

i am awash with colour, sated with imagery - also sick and unable to write right now. but thankyou for the reads :kiss:
 
chipbutty said:
a wondrous thread

i am awash with colour, sated with imagery - also sick and unable to write right now. but thankyou for the reads :kiss:
Click to expand...

Feel better, then write. I know you are a colorful girl. :D

I'm going to see if I can persuade UnderYourSpell to try this, too. She is someone who I have always thought paints color delicately through her poems.

:kiss:
 
It was an orange masterpiece they said,
but I in my indigo raged against a light
too strong, solidifying inside my head
creating a pain, to tear apart the very senses
where sought I to bathe again my heart,
washed into the safe palette of imperial blue.
 
Artistic

Seeking inspiration
Wikipedia was there
typing in "crayola"
in the midst of my despair.
Alphabetic colours
A, "Almond" to the "Y",
old-hat "Yellow Orange"
and that's two shades by-the-bye.
In between are colours
names only publicists could print,
'Tropical Rain Forest",
"Razzmatazz" and "Magic Mint",
"Unmellow Yellow", "Tumbleweed",
"Violets Purple", Blue and Red,
the list' is most confusing
so I'll use black lead instead.​
 
champagne1982 said:
Georgian Bay Sunset

I will try not to use tired jaundice
or hem my thoughts with prose-tinted
violet, but instead linger on fuchia....
Click to expand...

Neonurotic said:
moonstruck

torn awake with tremors of a black dreary
to something just as bleak, more clinical than not.
i try to remember this isn't home, but it's been
sixty-six days with many more left to pass.
.....
Click to expand...

UnderYourSpell said:
It was an orange masterpiece they said,
but I in my indigo raged against a light
too strong, solidifying inside my head
....
Click to expand...

Tristesse2 said:
Seeking inspiration
Wikipedia was there
typing in "crayola"
in the midst of my despair.
Alphabetic colours
A, "Almond" to the "Y",
old-hat "Yellow Orange"
and that's two shades by-the-bye.
....​
Click to expand...

:heart::heart::heart::heart:

You're like this.
 
Last edited:
It was lilacs in the breeze
once spring lapped the ground
and fleshed the world green,

petals lightly delicate
as tiny butterflies rose
vine clinging to peeling slats.

The Sun's slanting patterns
on the pages and my arms,

the snap of cloudy sheets
shivers of billowing sails
and the little yard a ship
going nowhere

but the morning

the inky deeps of words
magenta my imagination.
 
Angeline said:
And you can't use whatever colors you pick to modify another word, i.e., like an adjective. !
Click to expand...

That was a tough rule. You have no idea how long it took me to write mine without doing that.
I'm surprised Literotica didn't auto-log me off.
 
Neonurotic said:
That was a tough rule. You have no idea how long it took me to write mine without doing that.
I'm surprised Literotica didn't auto-log me off.
Click to expand...

Yep. Eve and Lauren would be proud of me, eh? I like rules that make me stretch.

But I figure one has only to meet the rules with one's first poem. Then it's a free-for-all. :D

Anyway, you wanna talk about tough rules Mr. Creator of the thread that grinds strong poets into hamburger? Yes, this one. It has made mincemeat of me more than once. :rose:
 
why orange you may ask
it was in fact
a principality in France
should you follow the line back
far enough
might as well be sepia
with all that history
criminals and exploiters
like the lot of them
should be drawn in sanguine
too many people have eaten
burnt umber and sienna
their mouths biting dirt
Goya recorded it all
a different time
a different war
still bloody
and anyway, throughout Europe
all lines connect
all the colours run into one
pool of shit
 
Tzara said:
And meaning. Chomsky purposefully constructed a grammatically coherent sentence that was meaningless.

Which, though, probably describes much of modern poetry.
Click to expand...
I think Pinsky exploded that, something like 5 different meanings can had.
 
twelveoone said:
I think Pinsky exploded that, something like 5 different meanings can had.
Click to expand...

Yeah but the way I always understood it is that it's not so much whether you can tease out meaning (which in the right context I suspect anyone can of any sentence), as it is that the syntax can create logical, grammatical structure without apparent meaning. :confused:
 
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