Out of Standard - The Irony of Hamilton Cork

Hamilton Cork: publisher and yachting enthusiast.  Image courtesy of Anonymous @ Photobucket

Greetings Garden Dwellers

Welcome to the January's Out of Standard.   If you are reading this, you have successfully navigated the January weather (regardless of what hemisphere you live in) and survived the beginning of 2013. 

Today’s Out of Standard will focus on another sort of beginning.

Award winning and critically acclaimed publisher Hamilton Cork has the ability to determine a book’s quality and potential simply by reading the first sentence of a manuscript.   Hamilton’s track record speaks for itself.   His press has published 37 of the last 42 titles to reach number one on the New York Times bestseller list.  In an ironic twist of fate, all of the first sentences which Hamilton fancied so much were removed from the final versions and have never seen the light of day.

Toads, fear not.  I have procured a list of these first sentences….and, I now present you with the January Out of Standard Challenge:

Revive Hamilton’s First Lines

Below is a list of some of Hamilton’s favorite first lines.  Your challenge will be to select one of the sentences below and use it in a poem so that it may finally see the light of day.  

• Your selection DOES NOT  have to be the first line of your poem (I think Susan covered first lines rather nicely in her Sunday challenge).
• It is required that you use the sentence in its entirety (word for word), in honor of Hamilton’s keen sense of good literature.   
• Poems posted for this challenge should be written expressly for this prompt.  Management reserves the right to remove unrelated or predated efforts.

First Sentences of Fine Literature as Selected by Hamilton Cork- a sampling for your consideration

“The shed pulsated and glided along the street consuming rubbish and stray cats like a wooden basking shark.”

“I threw myself on to Jesus and crushed him flat with my boomerangs.”

“Chi and Ricard tied their hair together, loaded their pistols and began to boogie to the hot Latin beats.”

“Underwater Steve went crazy when he was photographed.”

“I was seven years old when I realized I had the ability to eat other people’s shadows.”

“The pirates all looked at the plate of freshly cut sandwiches before them and immediately burst into tears.”

 “Although she wouldn’t admit it, Jill knew she was slowly turning into a hula hoop.”

“Cats, cats, cats, everywhere cats, but then stepping out from the crowd, a single crab.”

“Tex stood at the back of the room in his enormous yellow trousers, hoping and wondering.”

“An eyeball as big as a car and fingers like summer hosepipes:  this guy wasn’t fucking around.”

“Zoobrella was her name, and she shone like a fresh crystal chrysanthemum from sector 5G.”

“Cancel the cakes, Marjorie, Sebastian’s going to use a trench coat instead.”

“Ian cried tears on to the hard shell of a dead crab and knew in his heart he was finally a man.”


Choose wisely, Toads!   And bring us back something unexpected!