Poetry thingy whatchamacallit
In Poetry Writing, we've been looking into this style of poetry called 'New Sentence' poetry. Basically, it's a bunch of unrelated sentences that sound poetic together. There's really no set form or rules for writing it. It's all about the juxtaposition of ideas and an utter lack of coherent 'transition' between one sentence/though and the next. Prof. Mohammad described it as 'free dissociation,' where 'the unit of poetic meaning/energy doesn't have overall syntactical continuity.' Whatever. The point behind all this is, I've been experimenting with it. Not too successfully, but I have been. Here's some of what I've been doing.
23-28 January 2006
Dachshunds look so comfy when they sleep with all their legs in the air. Dead male poets lined up with their bindings crumbling. Cars drive by all night long this out-of-the-way street. Root menu, title menu, special features, feature film and no one can find the fucking remote. Letters, letters, ‘til my mailbox is full and the postman comes to the door, hoping for a cup of tea. Swords fell from the vaulted ceiling while the young priest wept over the Eucharist. Turtles don’t mind the rain because they’re always home. You’ve got to love it when Mal says, “Shiny.” We stood looking at that watercolor for the longest time until your feet started cramping. I opened my curtains the other day for the first time in two weeks, just to see the mist obscuring the hills.
23-28 January 2006
If you stare hard enough, it slips smooth and blue to the skyline. You’re still in bed, though you woke up for Oprah. “Isn’t ballet poetry in motion?” A space heater whirs and oscillates, but the room stays frigid. An avenging unicorn impales plastic businessmen while numbers and symbols pour from their shocked eyes. Please, leave your shoes on when you come to my house because I can’t stand the smell of feet. “It’d take months to climb Everest, man, because, I mean, you have to accumulate.” Thank God for old sofas. Drinking Pepsi and eating egg rolls in a purple bathrobe on Saturday morning. If she turns around she’ll see all the faces on the headboard being blank and hard. Forms drift in and out of the fields of rudimentary vision.
29 January 2006
Pop music stuck on repeat, though I can’t tell if it’s just one song or a whole album. She reads Webster’s Dictionary to pass the dim hours between his leaving and returning. The Union Jack drenched in sleet. It’s the biggest ball of rubber bands I’ve ever seen. We asked your mother to watch the plants, but she forgot and went to Vegas. Pass around the after-dinner mints, darling? Policemen stop the patrol car to chat with the security guard on her rounds. Another box of Kleenex gone. Stupid bugger sat on his mobile - he won’t be calling her like he promised. If only the gargoyles would unfold themselves and swan-dive from the top of the belfry. Sixty-some years and she still cries at Casablanca. I came home to find all my posters on the ground and you on the couch with wine coolers. The Korean War makes me think of all the crap they make in Taiwan. Ante up if you want to stay in for this hand. Fingernails grow at an alarming rate when not chewed regularly. If I didn’t know any better, this would be far more serious.
29 January 2006
Why do you call me lucky? Blogging is an exercise in public futility: the more you write, the less they care. I dreamed and my spirit animal came to tell me that the stars would weep today. Is anything better than burying cold toes in warm sand and smelling the sea-storm roll landward? The list of words she cannot comprehend fills many little notepads. Your kids wanted to wrap birthday presents, so I gave them your scotch tape to use up. He should read his books before they go moldy. And when the pain comes I just remember why I want to feel this way. The Appalachians in America were demoted to hills, but in England they changed the official height for mountains so they could actually have some. I sometimes wish Sir Ethelred the Eager wasn’t just pewter. Bamboo leaves waving in the sultry wind, casting patterns of shadow over the soldiers in the mud. This is the night to trip over my own inconstancy. She saw bits of paper lying about and decided to file her life away. The bed broke again. How is it that we managed to associate King Kong with a sketchy penis? I go into a situation armed with her feelings and his feelings, but never my own. The sun rises and still you belong to me.
I'm honestly not sure if I like them. I mean, they seem all shifty and new age, but do they really mean anything? I know where most of that garbage came from, but can they really mean anything to my readers? I don't know. Any feedback on my crappy poetry would be lovely. Especially ways in which to improve it or thoughts on how this 'New Sentence' garbage actually works. Granted, my poems aren't the best example of this technique. I suggest reading Ron Silliman (who coined the phrase 'New Sentence') or Stephanie Young for better examples. Anyway, now I must read some about the Korean War. *Sigh*
23-28 January 2006
Dachshunds look so comfy when they sleep with all their legs in the air. Dead male poets lined up with their bindings crumbling. Cars drive by all night long this out-of-the-way street. Root menu, title menu, special features, feature film and no one can find the fucking remote. Letters, letters, ‘til my mailbox is full and the postman comes to the door, hoping for a cup of tea. Swords fell from the vaulted ceiling while the young priest wept over the Eucharist. Turtles don’t mind the rain because they’re always home. You’ve got to love it when Mal says, “Shiny.” We stood looking at that watercolor for the longest time until your feet started cramping. I opened my curtains the other day for the first time in two weeks, just to see the mist obscuring the hills.
23-28 January 2006
If you stare hard enough, it slips smooth and blue to the skyline. You’re still in bed, though you woke up for Oprah. “Isn’t ballet poetry in motion?” A space heater whirs and oscillates, but the room stays frigid. An avenging unicorn impales plastic businessmen while numbers and symbols pour from their shocked eyes. Please, leave your shoes on when you come to my house because I can’t stand the smell of feet. “It’d take months to climb Everest, man, because, I mean, you have to accumulate.” Thank God for old sofas. Drinking Pepsi and eating egg rolls in a purple bathrobe on Saturday morning. If she turns around she’ll see all the faces on the headboard being blank and hard. Forms drift in and out of the fields of rudimentary vision.
29 January 2006
Pop music stuck on repeat, though I can’t tell if it’s just one song or a whole album. She reads Webster’s Dictionary to pass the dim hours between his leaving and returning. The Union Jack drenched in sleet. It’s the biggest ball of rubber bands I’ve ever seen. We asked your mother to watch the plants, but she forgot and went to Vegas. Pass around the after-dinner mints, darling? Policemen stop the patrol car to chat with the security guard on her rounds. Another box of Kleenex gone. Stupid bugger sat on his mobile - he won’t be calling her like he promised. If only the gargoyles would unfold themselves and swan-dive from the top of the belfry. Sixty-some years and she still cries at Casablanca. I came home to find all my posters on the ground and you on the couch with wine coolers. The Korean War makes me think of all the crap they make in Taiwan. Ante up if you want to stay in for this hand. Fingernails grow at an alarming rate when not chewed regularly. If I didn’t know any better, this would be far more serious.
29 January 2006
Why do you call me lucky? Blogging is an exercise in public futility: the more you write, the less they care. I dreamed and my spirit animal came to tell me that the stars would weep today. Is anything better than burying cold toes in warm sand and smelling the sea-storm roll landward? The list of words she cannot comprehend fills many little notepads. Your kids wanted to wrap birthday presents, so I gave them your scotch tape to use up. He should read his books before they go moldy. And when the pain comes I just remember why I want to feel this way. The Appalachians in America were demoted to hills, but in England they changed the official height for mountains so they could actually have some. I sometimes wish Sir Ethelred the Eager wasn’t just pewter. Bamboo leaves waving in the sultry wind, casting patterns of shadow over the soldiers in the mud. This is the night to trip over my own inconstancy. She saw bits of paper lying about and decided to file her life away. The bed broke again. How is it that we managed to associate King Kong with a sketchy penis? I go into a situation armed with her feelings and his feelings, but never my own. The sun rises and still you belong to me.
I'm honestly not sure if I like them. I mean, they seem all shifty and new age, but do they really mean anything? I know where most of that garbage came from, but can they really mean anything to my readers? I don't know. Any feedback on my crappy poetry would be lovely. Especially ways in which to improve it or thoughts on how this 'New Sentence' garbage actually works. Granted, my poems aren't the best example of this technique. I suggest reading Ron Silliman (who coined the phrase 'New Sentence') or Stephanie Young for better examples. Anyway, now I must read some about the Korean War. *Sigh*