A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Forty-Five

I have been playing around with writing poems that take after traditions in conceptual art, in which the poem is more of a figurative object, not an actual poem, but an idea of the poem for the reader to engage with.  To offer an example;

Morning Poem

My poem is the words you would use to describe the sky the last time you were awake at dawn.


I am aware that many people would probably laugh at me for a thing of that sort, and would assume it is not a serious endeavor, but the point is, in part, to question what a poem is, to examine ideas about what it means to say a thing is a poem.  I claim that this is a poem, and that the words of it are not the words written here, but are the ones that come in response, and that I am the writer of that poem.  At the same time, this kind of work has to be irreverent, by the nature of what it means to challenge the status quo, and I recognize that work of this sort of work can seem silly, but I think that silliness is a result of the fact that it stretches the idea of a poem so far out of shape.  Encountering it, I can imagine easily that it might not make sense to some readers, but that is a necessary aspect of the work itself.  I do wonder whether poems of this sort would be accepted for publication, to be honest, and I think it is the kind of work I might never be able to do without establishing my ability to write more traditional pieces first.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is this whole blog thing for anyway?

I am starting this because I said I would.  My friend Tim persuaded me, and that was probably a far more difficult and complicated maneuver on his part, that I should start this blog, and I made a commitment that I would, so here I am.  Which gives a reason for why this blog exists, but not really much of a purpose for that to lend meaning to that existence, which makes it like a lot of us, I suppose.  Of course, there are two purposes to this exercise, though there might only be one at a time, as they are largely about perspective, I think.  For instance, right now, a large part of the purpose, for me, is to have the commitment of adding to this blog consistently, as a matter of building the habit of working more steadily.  I have built that habit before, but it has always been intermittent, largely driven by situational demands.  In college, many years ago, I wrote daily, because I had an audience and because I was in classes that I felt committed to wr...
Read more

Part Three Is Coming

I want to apologize for the lateness of my post today.  Last night, I was out of town and only arrived home this afternoon.  It being a quick trip,. I decided not to bring a computer and to do my work when I arrived home, so I will be reading the next chapter and writing today's post shortly. While I am on here, though, I wanted to return, momentarily to questions I raised earlier.  One issue that I hadn't mentioned, although it is something that I have wrestled with previously, concerning the personal, is that I am not entirely comfortable speaking about third parties that I personally know in the context of written work.  This is largely because those people are not present as I am communicating, and they have not given any actual permission for me to discuss them.  That having  been said, I do feel a bit of leeway about telling things of myself.  For example. I feel very strange about yesterday, as it was Friday the 13th and I had a number of un...
Read more

Le Guin, Steering The Craft, Chapter Five: Adjectives and Adverbs (Exercise Five, Chastity)

A note of apology for my lateness with this.  I had expected to have time earlier in the day, but it was not to be, alas.  Anyhow, I am still a bit nervous about this exercise, though it is clearly of significant import to Le Guin, as she points out that it is the only exercise that she has given to all of her workshops.  That, of course, does not alter my feelings about it, excepting that I am aware of it as something valuable and worth doing, so the fact that it is a bit daunting might well be seen, through that light, as a promise of reward, perhaps.  The more difficult the task, the more one has to gain, at least by some logic... Exercise Five: Chastity Mr. Torino was in charge.  He had his way.  It was the way.  Desktops are clean.  Nothing but work.  No pictures: not your kids; not your girl or wife; not (as Allen recounted) your car.   None of that.  No plants.  No cartoons.  That is for home, this is work....
Read more