Notes from Graduate School

Frozen bread slices from the freezer. How else is one to eat. One plus two plus peanut butter chew. Take this azalea and cut its stem. Display in house for three days. Light a candle when you read. Read well and many. Be well. Eat well. With wisdom spend pennies. I sit in a rickety chair to read well. Candle lit to be well. Burnt the bread now. High broil is high turmoil in a rickety chair with no timer. Check your eyes to see well. Look across a cut lawn to be well. Run a hand against your dog’s coat. His ears agree. More cream cheese on burnt surfaces to eat well. Is as is. Read now. Climb the Sears Tower and use teeth. Arms out palms up. Find your spell. I sit in a rickety chair by a window. And candle fire dances. Fresh bread is better bread. Find a hot shower to feel well. Nose against a window to catch azaleas. Arms out palms up spell found. Teeth intact in fact. Now read to see. Stomach full of burnt bread and cream cheese. Find letters to write letters. Use short sentences. Paragraph mkes emotion. Find the ocean to be well. Hands across skin on three now. Spend nickels wisely like ivory. Find a dog and pet. Better yet find your own. Eat fresh bread unburnt. Seek color in grass in glass in flowers. Take a shower. Climb Sears Tower. Sit in a rickety chair. Find your way. Read now. Lawns and trees and hummingbirds. They generate motion. We find emotion. Write now. Rickety chair and cut azalea to be well. Words to see well. Room packed with stargazers.

I was intrigued by Ron Silliman’s excerpt from The New Sentence. He does a great job teaching from the page and written word. After reading his take on poetics and the prose form in poetry (as well as notes from Gertrude Stein’s influential Tender Buttons) and subsequently reading his prose poetry, I wanted to give it a try myself. Of the three creative pieces I’ve submitted to the blog this semester, this was the most fun to write. A self-critique is that, though I aimed not to, I found myself still wanting to move the words forward to achieve syllogism. It’s difficult to resist this impulse! My “disjunctive mosaic” of words does not achieve the level of confusion that the excerpt from Silliman’s “Tjanting” does, but nevertheless, the exercise was a useful aid in showing a novice “language poet” a bit of what this school works toward in its use of written word.