Here is a delightful collection of collaborative poems by our readers. We begin writing each poem by using the title and the first line from a well-known poem by a familiar author. Then readers create an entirely new poem by adding lines of their own.

Our first poem was completed by our readers in October 1997, and is entitled An August Afternoon, with a first line from a poem by Bronislaw Maj. It contains some surprising twists and turns and uses some exceptional language.

In our second joint effort, APW readers take us far afield with sprung rhythms to strange lands in this poem called A Journey. It begins with a first line from a poem of that title by Edward Field.

Our third collaborative work uses a first line from a poem entitled Eye Mask by Denise Levertov (in memorium, 1923-1997). The result is a poem showing a remarkable consistency in the image of the mask from beginning to end.

In our fourth collaborative work, our readers write their thoughts and feelings into Another Spring, using a first line from a poem of that title by Chinese poet Tu Fu. In this poem, spring has bloomed from early April until early June.

Next, visitors to these pages have written a remarkable series of lines beginning with a first line from an untitled poem by Jelaluddin Rumi. This work begins with ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, and ends by asking a question.

In August, 1998, visitors to this page began with the first line from a very well-known poem by William Carlos Williams entitled The Red Wheelbarrow. Though Williams only wrote eight lines in this poem, our readers had quite a few lines to add.

Here, beginning with Wislawa Szymborska's View With a Grain of Sand, readers show us the world that they have discovered inside a grain of sand.

A line from 13th century Japanese poet Muso Soseki's Magnificent Peak inspired this next collaboration from January to March 1999.

Nearly eighteen months have passed since we began this collaborative project, and since then, the APW Group Poem project has become one of our most popular features. Our ninth collaboration begins with a first line from Louis Simpson's After Midnight, in which our collaborators embark on a journey between the subconscious and wakefulness to determine the meaning of their dreams.

As summer 1999 comes to a close, we complete our tenth collaboration. Beginning with a first line by French poet Jean Follan, our visitors cast a long, collective look into A Mirror.

Starting Early, readers begin with a first line by the eminent Chinese poet of the T'ang Dynasty, Po Chü-I, and look back into the past as they gaze into the future.

An Anonymous Eskimo poet's Magic Words inspire our readers to contemplate ancestral worlds and the gods who flung us from them in our final collaboration at the end of the millenium.

This first collaboration of the new century begins with a humorous look at domestic engineering. Our contributors clean up, starting with a first line from California poet Al Zolynas's The Zen of Housework.

The first line from Langston Hughes's poem Freedom's Plow sends our visitors down the furrows with the seeds of their ideas and their lines to discover the meaning of freedom.

Our readers climb into Jane Kenyon's Thimble and ride it out to sea in search of love in our fifteenth collaborative poem.

Falling head over heels in love for each other, our readers begin with a first line from The Most of It by Robert Frost. Find out how they have become fixed in minds of emotion and logic.

Composed before and after our national tragedy, the lines of this poem take a dramatic turn after September 11. Beginning with a first line from Miroslav Holub's Sorcerer's Lament, our readers express both their laments and sorrows.

Hope is alive and flying on unruffled wings in this collaboration beginning with the first line from Emily Dickinson's "Hope" is the thing with feathers --. For nearly five years now, this group collaboration project has been one of the most popular among visitors to these pages -- a hopeful sign of the vitality of poetry.

Please join us now in this poem that continues in the spirit of awakening as we begin with a first line from Wallace Stevens's Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock.

Writers, please add only one line per visit.