Mad Lib Poetry

Today I offer an interactive activity!  One of the things that continues to amaze me about the poems I admire most is the precision of word choice.  As I child I loved playing Mad Libs during every road trip, so I decided to replicate the fun game with some of Robert Frost's most well-known poems.

The point of this word game is not to mock or parody Frost's poetry, but rather to demonstrate how easily the poem's entire meaning can be changed by replacing his nouns for others.  

I chose, "Mending Wall" and "The Road Not Taken". 

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost from The Norton Anthology of American Literature (W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2003.  Sixth edition), p. 1880-1881 and p. 1887.

I identified parts of speech in the first 11 lines of "Mending Wall" and the first stanza of "The Road Not Taken", and I asked friends and family to give me the first word that came to mind for the following parts of speech without telling them what poem their choices would become a part of. 

Mending Wall:

Noun:
Verb in the third person present tense:
Group of people (ex: hunters, Americans, etc...):
Object pronoun (him, her, them):
Animal:
Time of year (season, month, time around a particular holiday, etc...):

The Road Not Taken:

Plural noun:
Infinitive verb:
Singular person (hunter, doctor, etc):
Adverb:
Preposition:
Location:

Please feel free to add your own in the comments section!