April 10, 2014
The Prompt: This procedure requires the first word of a text to have only one letter, the second two, the third three, and so on as far as resourcefulness and inspiration allow. The first word of a snowball is normally a vowel: in English, a I or O.
From your newspaper, select a starting vowel and then continue adding words of increasing length from the same source article or passage. Challenge yourself further by only using words in order as you encounter them in the text.
I chose to do a two-column pair of snowball poems under one title, one inverted, to explore whether one form might subconsciously invoke an expansion effect while the inverted snowball might represent an idea dwindling to its smallest particle. The website sortmylist.com, while a bit fiddly, is a great tool for this sort of poem! I’m listing the source first because formatting this in WordPress to have two columns was a nightmare, and putting anything afterwards seems to break it.
Source: Pullam, Roy. “McCormick deserves chance to continue great work.” courierpress.com. Evansville Courier & Press. Web. 10 April 2014.
Read how other Ouliposters tackled this prompt here.
Disparity
communities
struggling,
declining.
Counties
without
future.
Small,
then—
You,
Us,
I
in
the
city,
think:
fiscal
support
increase—
establish
confidence,
opportunity,
accomplishment.
Jody Rich ~ poetry fueled by cold coffee 
Excellent poem, Jody!! And, done so early! 😉
Insomnia paid off, for once! 🙂
🙂
Oh! This is very clever indeed.
This is so cool! 🙂
Nicely done! I love “I, in the city, think:”
I like the visual aspect, Jody, particularly from large to small. That column almost seems to turn.
Oh, clever! Well done! I like your variation; wish I had thought of it.
Well done Jody…the whole concept, the layout, everything…probably my favourite I’ve seen today for sure…
Thank you! 🙂