Unusual lesson - a river of stones

We have to fill in the missing words, in German, in a love poem by Erich Fried. It's open to interpretation, the teacher says. Any word, anywhere. I read mine out first. It is quite different to the versions that follow. One thing is clear: I have a very cynical view of love. I didn't expect to be taught this in a German class.

Comments

[Bridget Whelan]

What a great idea. Did everyone come up with different words and different slants on the same theme?
Perhaps I could use the idea in a creative writing class but I would have to find a poem that was (a) good and )b) fairly obscure to make sure students hadn't come across it before..

[katebrown]

Bridget, Erich Fried's poem is called 'What it Is'. This is a link to an English translation.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/114738.Erich_Fried

It was a very simple exercise. Basically the teacher took out all the 'madness, love, reason, pride, foolish, caution' and so forth, jumbled them up at the bottom of the page (we knew we needed to use 'love' three times) and asked us to put them in the order we thought was appropriate. That she'd given us the words isn't clear in my post, I realise.

Most people came far closer to the original than I did. I realised afterwards that I'd bypassed the knowledge that it was a love poem - which we had been told - and I think that's why my version was different.