A poem of a different color

I love collections :-) One of Kenneth Koch's ideas in Wishes, Lies, and Dreams was to sprinkle a poem with Spanish colors (which grew into other words too).

I thought it might be fun to collect color names from many different languages. Try picking one language and not looking at the English color names. (Though some are from familiar roots and you'll be able to guess :-) Use the colors by sound. Or use the words to mean something else. What does each sound like?

In prose or poetry, create a colorful event: a festival, a holiday, a circus, nightclub, a culture drawn to bright colors. Set it in the future or past or a fantasy world. An interstellar ship trying to keep people's spirits up during the years long trip with spirited music and colorful decorations. A culture where dyes are rare so they bring out their colorful clothes only once a year in celebration of spring.

Here's what a couple of the kids did with the idea in Wishes, Lies and Dreams:

On my planeta named Carambona La Paloma
We have a fiesta called Luna Estrella.
A funny looking hombre comes to our homes.
He has four heads: a leon head, an oso head, a mono head, and a culebra head.
We do a baile named Mar of Nieve.
On this fiesta we eat platos.
That's how we celebrate Christmas on my planet.

Marion Mackles

The luna is big and clara.
The perro I saw is almost as big as a caballo.
The caballo I saw ate the manzana I had.
The estrella was as clara as the sun.

Valerie Chasse