Once again, I’m blown away at the access schools and museums give a clumsy chump like me. Last month I got to flip through an original printing of Napoleon’s Description de l'Égypte at the Ryerson Library, and yesterday I browsed the University of Chicago’s special collection of Poetry Magazine’s early archive. They have the original manuscript of T.S. Eliot's first published poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, typed by Eliot, with his scribbling all over it. They’ve also got hand-written letters and rough drafts of poems by Pound, Eliot, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost (who haggled over $50 with Moore in a long series of letters), Wallace Stevens, and so on. And they let me hold this shit! Pick it up, make paper airplanes, etc. I don’t know who else they let in that place (I got in because one of my professors has the hook up), but if you can make it happen, it’s a top-notch place to geek out. I also recommend stopping by the bar at the bowling alley next door beforehand; they’ve got huge baskets of fries for cheap, ensuring you’ll leave your greasy thumbprint on history, like I did. And come on, you need a few strong drinks to handle some of Pound’s bullshit.
p.s. I just spent the last hour messing with the template, hopefully everything on this blog looks good to you faithful readers out there?
1 comment:
So my former professor in Memphis sent me this April poetry challenge she did last semester...I think it's pretty good if you are having a hard time.
"...a generative form written over a 30 day (April) period and the purpose of which is genealogical homage and proliferation. The poet begins with 2 parent lines (or stanzas) of any length from any 2 poems or poets. That is day one--the choosing. On the second day, the words of those lines or stanzas are treated as genetic material to produce
a progeny line or stanza. On the third day, a new line or stanza is written that serves to couple with the preceding progeny in order to produce new progeny on Day 4...and so on. Until Day 30 when the final progeny can use any of the dominant or recessive "DNA" preceding it. Beyond that, the poet may add as many additional formal elements or rules as one desires. In this way, the form is quite flexible. And potential. The poet should attempt to compose only one line or stanza per day because the passage of time--the gradual accumulations of experience, of the ordinary and
extraordinary, is crucial to the form.
Anyway, it takes some of the pressure off with the whole process of it, and she ended up getting a whole book from it because she liked it so well. I am going to give it a try. I'm sure she wouldn't mind sharing.
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