Here's an idea I had (file it under stupid avant-garde poet tricks). Rewrite a poem from memory. It has to be a poem that you remember something significant about, but you aren't allowed to use something you know too well. A poem in a foreign language is best, because then your version will be free of interference from the actual language of the poem. Here's my first attempt, from a great poem of Nicanor Parra that I vaguely remember. I don't know the title. I also didn't know to what extent I should invent things I know were not in the poem. There's obviously two ways to go: to try to be as faithful as possible to an unfaithful memory, or to take arms against the frailty of remembrance and invent some wacky variations.

CRAZY AUNTS

I spent the prime of my youth living with my two crazy great-aunts, Hortensia and Acacia.

I was studying for a notary exam I would never pass, like the typical señorito of my inane generation.

They forced me to engage in long negotiations with the electric company over small billing errors

To empty bedpans. My manhood suffered extreme blows.

I would have to dance the tango with them by turns long into the night

And prepare foul-smelling poultices, mustard and cloves.

One day I went out for cigarettes and never came back.

Executing their estate took another ten years from my vitality.

It turned out they were nebulous partners in criminal conspiracies.

Yet their sordidness let me reinvent Latin American poetry,

Save it from Neruda's obsolete nobility

As a broken man of 44.

***

Update: I won't embarrass myself by giving you the real poem to compare to my extremely imperfect memeroy. I went back and read it. It is much superior to anything in my sordid memory of it. It is called "El túnel."