Poems and poetry as experiential art experiments, created by a dedicated core, sparking consciousness river, word slurry. A harvest of poems and creative thought from a creative collective cadre.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
nightmare
we try less rapidly. We then try more hypothetical means
the complete nightmare that all we had we had to carry
more and more uncertain we correct the imbalances
Yes, we forfeited space and the level plunged
What was the
This is so visually arresting. The white is as important to me as the black. The scribbling lines of blackout so expressive, the overlay of a nightmare, with reality being blotted out, crawling over everything else, eclipsing storymaker's sense. The dissolving into "what was the..."
From a process perspective, would love to hear about your process of making this, the sequence of how you moved through this. Did the words pop first, was it from top to bottom, or did it ooze out nonlinear... if you're willing to share.
I am thinking about suggesting this as a way of processing dreams, the phrases so suggestive, a kind of anti-collage, a bricolage of blotting.... Thanks Daniel!
...Also, the bravery of encountering uncomfortable material without trying to shine it into sense or tidying it out of recognition of the originating emotions/experience. I am sitting lately lots with the postmodernist's critique of the cultural metapattern of desire for wholeness and completion.
I know sometimes I tilt toward pollyanna, wanting to avoid/worrying about the longcurse of incantational power. but the larger danger is averring our actual emotions, as if some of them had detonators when it's really turning from what flows through that unspools the explosive wire.... In my journaling I sometimes write a containing sigil around expressions that seem potentially harm-causing if leashed out unwittingly into the ethosphere. There is a meta-sturdiness to the integrity of this expression for me, even as it represents disintegration, jaggedyness... perhaps that's the alterpersona: jaggedy ann instead of pollyann. there's a middle of the night poem here... thanks for the generativity of your creative gifts!
This was certainly the wildest of that batch of blackout poems. The page was from a textbook on catalog marketing. I don't recall the process clearly, only that I was attracted to the word "nightmare" that sprung out of the otherwise academic language of the page. I think I circled words and phrases I liked, then began to cross out. Starting with the idea of nightmare, the chaos of the inking out came by itself, perhaps also in my own tendency to do things differently as the blackout poems I read that inspired me to try it in the first place were rather neatly executed by comparison.
Totally relate, Scooter, to your feeling of pollyanna-izing and the dance of resistance and relenting around that. One thing I enjoy about making blackout poems is that you have little choice of what words you choose, and in this example, the subject, tone and style all came from words on the page, not from me (whatever "me" means).
Good quote from my 5Rhythms teacher today: "Nothing is true that isn't paradoxical."
This is so visually arresting. The white is as important to me as the black. The scribbling lines of blackout so expressive, the overlay of a nightmare, with reality being blotted out, crawling over everything else, eclipsing storymaker's sense. The dissolving into "what was the..."
ReplyDeleteFrom a process perspective, would love to hear about your process of making this, the sequence of how you moved through this. Did the words pop first, was it from top to bottom, or did it ooze out nonlinear... if you're willing to share.
I am thinking about suggesting this as a way of processing dreams, the phrases so suggestive, a kind of anti-collage, a bricolage of blotting.... Thanks Daniel!
...Also, the bravery of encountering uncomfortable material without trying to shine it into sense or tidying it out of recognition of the originating emotions/experience. I am sitting lately lots with the postmodernist's critique of the cultural metapattern of desire for wholeness and completion.
ReplyDeleteI know sometimes I tilt toward pollyanna, wanting to avoid/worrying about the longcurse of incantational power. but the larger danger is averring our actual emotions, as if some of them had detonators when it's really turning from what flows through that unspools the explosive wire.... In my journaling I sometimes write a containing sigil around expressions that seem potentially harm-causing if leashed out unwittingly into the ethosphere. There is a meta-sturdiness to the integrity of this expression for me, even as it represents disintegration, jaggedyness... perhaps that's the alterpersona: jaggedy ann instead of pollyann. there's a middle of the night poem here... thanks for the generativity of your creative gifts!
This was certainly the wildest of that batch of blackout poems. The page was from a textbook on catalog marketing. I don't recall the process clearly, only that I was attracted to the word "nightmare" that sprung out of the otherwise academic language of the page. I think I circled words and phrases I liked, then began to cross out. Starting with the idea of nightmare, the chaos of the inking out came by itself, perhaps also in my own tendency to do things differently as the blackout poems I read that inspired me to try it in the first place were rather neatly executed by comparison.
ReplyDeleteTotally relate, Scooter, to your feeling of pollyanna-izing and the dance of resistance and relenting around that. One thing I enjoy about making blackout poems is that you have little choice of what words you choose, and in this example, the subject, tone and style all came from words on the page, not from me (whatever "me" means).
Good quote from my 5Rhythms teacher today: "Nothing is true that isn't paradoxical."