I was trying to write a place poem, but couldn't, because it didn't feel right or fresh...or anything for that matter. So I got to thinking, what if we were forced to write outside of our experience all together? You might say, "But Bendi, I just wrote a poem about Sylvia Plath's suicide last weekend!" and I would respond, "Did Sylvia Plath describe her suicide to you? No? Then this is different." I think there's something in the personal element of story telling combined with responsibility of doing justice to experience (which poets understand so well) that opens an avenue for moderately challenging work
Here's the challenge: Someone describes to you an authentic experience of theirs and you flesh it out in a poem that is in return 'authentic,' or as true as possible to the person's original experience. As a safe-guard from boredom/complicator, the experience when described should be communicateed with as much concision as possible.
The point here is not to actually produce something that is a facsimile of what someone else experienced, but to be immersed in the process of creating using someone else's frame of reference. At best, it will be an exercise in empathy and we'll all learn something about the displacement of self. At worst, this is a stupid idea.
:P
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3 comments:
Oh Bendi, you should really stop apologizing for yourself because you have the potential to be a revolutionary. (Revolutions never apologize, at least I've never seen one feel sorry).
I dig your idea. Let's do it, and on this damn blog. I'll give you an experience and visa versa.. perhaps you could write about lamps falling from ceilings? Or cough-vomit in a certain professor's office?
PS-
The poem was the shit too. More comments on that later, my arms hurt from so much lamp.
i like it. i'm all about moderately challenging work. i'd say more, but the little jaded man inside me is staring agape at the words "revolutions never apologize, at least I've never seen one feel sorry."
I can't tell whether i'm a grumpy old man or just scared of an entirely new plane of intellegence being traded here. I'm still on poo jokes.
I can make poo jokes. I don't have one right now, but I'll throw them all over the place.
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