"Symposium" by Paul Muldoon; Proverbs and Idioms Played with in Poetry

"Poetry begins with little glimmers -- the sense that there might be an interaction between two things, two often quite unlike things that come together in a metaphor or an image." - Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Symposium

You can bring a horse to water but you can't make it hold
its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds.
Every dog has a stitch in time. Two heads? You've been sold
one good turn. One good turn deserves a bird in the hand.

A bird in the hand is better than no bread.
To have your cake is to pay Paul.
Make hay while you can still hit the nail on the head.
For want of a nail the sky might fall.

People in glass houses can't see the wood
for the new broom. Rome wasn't built between two stools.
Empty vessels wait for no man.

A hair of the dog is a friend indeed.
There's no fool like the fool
who's shot his bolt. There's no smoke after the horse is gone.

from The New Yorker , October 2, 1995

Paul Muldoon's "Symposium" - referenced in Proverbs



From PBS:
Activities

1. Create your own verbal "symposium," using parts of well-known aphorisms, proverbs, or folk sayings. Create your own visual "symposium," using widely different kinds of images from magazines, newspapers, and photographs.