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“We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.” Mark Strand

Fragment poetry comes to us in several different forms. There are the literal pieces of torn papyrus, church mouse eaten pages so that what was once complete comes to us readers as disjointed words, lines, pages. Translators of Sappho for example fill the gaps where possible with bracketed guesswork in order to find the sense/meanings that are lost.

19th century poets like Byron, Keats, Coleridge evolved the Romantic Fragment of deliberate unfinished texts, seeing them as allegory of sudden death, departures, hints of something greater. Coleridge’s “Kubla Kahn” was one such after an interruption literally broke his dream recall and thread of thought.

Later the modernist and postmodernists wrote Fragment poetry as a mirror to time and space in contemporary urban life, with its linkage of non-sequiturs leaving gaps as tears, lacunae, like a mouth of broken teeth. Ted Berrigan’s “The Sonnets: 1” are an example as is this extract:

…Is there room in the room that you room in?
Upon his structured tomb:
Still they mean something. For the dance
And the architecture.
Weave among incidents
May be portentous to him
We are the sleeping fragments of his sky,
Wind giving presence to fragments.

And turning full circle, one translator of Sappho emulates the modernist approach by keeping the gaps, the illegible, as pauses, and even reordering the fragments as Lombardo, fragment #60

Abanthis, take your lyre and sing
of Gongyla, while desire once again
flutters around
the beautiful girl: her dress
excited when you saw it,
and I am glad,
for the holy Cyprian herself
blamed me when I prayed

this word

I want…

Back in December 2021, my MTB prompt “Picking up some pieces” was to write a Fragment Poem but for today’s MTB prompt we are doing the opposite i.e. taking a fragment of poetry and making a whole. In short, copy, paste and then elaborate.

Poetry Prompt: Pick a Fragment by selecting up to 13 consecutive lines

  • from a published poet (can even be a fragment poem)
  • OR from an unpublished draft of yours
  • OR from one of your own poems

Poetry Style: Integrate this fragment into a new poem but keep the line order

  • scatter throughout your poem as broken lines, disjointed words etc, with gaps, pauses etc
  • OR Write your poem alongside the fragmentary parts, as though they are dialoguing

Guidelines: italicise the fragment lines, words (and reference the author/poem in your post)
There are no rules regarding rhyme or syllable but you might want to emulate the tone/meter of the fragment extract

Fragment poem examples:
Poetry Soup Listing

Further Reading:
Fragment -glossary
The Tradition of the Fragment
Sappho: Complete Poems and Fragments Tr by Stanley Lombardo

So once you have posted your poem according to the guidelines above, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting and reading other contributors as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.

[N.B. Mr Linky closes Saturday 3 p.m. EST]