PoMoSco Day 27

Three more days. Hard to believe. But, I will have many poems in my revision bag that I am happy about reworking. Today’s prompt is an erasure by chance: Start with two dice and your source text. You’ll want to work with a smaller section of text for this one. For each line, roll the dice. Erase or remove the word in that line that corresponds with the number that comes up (i.e., if you roll an eight, erase the eighth word in that line). Continue to work through the text, re-rolling the dice for each line, until you’ve reached the end of your source text solution.

Repeat, removing additional words, until you arrive at your poem. Experiment with space, illustration or other visual presentation to engage with the relative silence created.

I chose another Adrienne Rich poem to work with and came up with: Child’s Poet Dreaming.

More Spaced Out Poems:

Misky: Shades Beneath White

Barbara C: Appalachian Dream

Richard Walker: judgmental in trusting

Rebecca Siegel: Map

Pamela Sayers: A Tease Around the Eyes

Gary Glauber: Thinking

Doug Luman: Audubon Field Report: Aphelocoma Coerulescens

I’ve known this throughout, but reading today’s poems brought home how differently we each approach writing a poem, how differently we interpret a prompt. Fascinating. Enjoy these. Tomorrow is another angst-filled prompt, for me, but should provide many interesting approaches.

 

PoMoSco Day 13

Hey, all. Seventeen days to go. Today’s form had me in terror. Paint? Crayons? You mean artistic? Then the saving word, collage: Create a poem that’s part erasure, part art. Instead of marking out the text you don’t need, use markers, crayons, paint and other materials to turn it into a picture. Not a strong artist? Try collage, using cut-outs from magazines and other sources to obscure your unused text. I can’t do traditional collage, mind you, but I can cut and layer: All That’s Left. It will take a few seconds to load.

Other artistic ways to obscure unwanted text, yet set off the poem in a way that works with the poem:

Rachel Green: A Fish  click on the fish

Pamela Sayers: My Mother Wore Heels in the Kitchen

Gary Glauber: All City

Misky: On Adder-Bit Wings

Barbara Crary: The Face of War

Marsha Schuh: After He Sailed the Distant Seas

I’m off to double-check tomorrow’s poem. It needs… something. Enjoy.

 

NaPoWriMo: Erasing 26

Posting later than usual. I’ll leave a link at Miz Q’s. The NaPoWriMo site asks for an erasure, today. I have never done an erasure, but I have just spent a month with a group of highly creative people who have. NaPoWriMo suggests Ginsberg’s Howl as a source text, among others.

I looked at Howl with some trepidation and then my eyes began to see the path. I would like to dedicate the erasure to my fellow Pulitzer Remixers (this includes you Jenni Baker!), for the help, the support, the camaraderie, and the shared experience. Some of the lines seem particularly apt to how our brains must feel as we crawl towards the finish. The phrase ‘my generation’ is as close as I can find for us.