This next poem is a poem that had two methods of inspiration.
The one was acrostic and the other
was this process based composition of erasure.
And I often give people advice probably more often
than they want.
But often it's the students and one hopes that they want it.
So a student of mine who is an MFA--
in an MFA program now.
She was an undergraduate student of mine called me
and she was in a panic because she said I can't write a poem
and it's due for the workshop what am I going to do?
And I said, well you write an ekphrastic poem
you know it's so easy.
You just go and you look at a painting
and then kind of pretend that you're in that scene.
And surrealist paintings are particularly good for that.
So just go online and Google surrealist painting
and go to images and find something and call me later.
So then whenever I give that kind of advice I think really
is that all it takes?
Could I do that?
Then I have to test myself.
So I Google surrealist painting image
and of course you get many options there.
And there was one that I'd never seen
and I was clear that it was not by a famous person.
But it was charming on its own terms.
And so I decided that actually would be a better
test because if I'm going to take Salvador Dali sure
that's easy.
So I took this painting and I began
to write as a result of what I was looking at.
And then I got so far and it was like OK.
Yeah, well it's not quite a poem yet, is it?
But it is a way to begin.
So I felt like I hadn't given bad advice.
But I realized that it's hard.
So I set it aside and then sometime after that I was--
someone mentioned a piece of music text
by John Cage, the experimental avant-garde composer
that is called "Roaratorio".
And it's a project that he did of writing over James Joyce's
Finnegan's Wake.
And he did it once and then he did it
again all different ways.
And you can go online and there are free mp3 downloads
if you want to hear some of it.
And as I was listening to them and searching around
on the internet, I found a an acceptance speech for an award
that he received for Roaratorio.
And I was reading it and I would see words
and I think oh that would be a good word to put in a poem.
And so I decided I would use that erasure technique.
So I copied it put it in a document
and began to take the words with the idea
that maybe this would be an extension of my acrostic advice
attempt.
And indeed it did satisfy me as the whole poem.
So it's called "The Circus Watcher."
Sorry.
I wear red to match the air that comes over the fence
and fills the jar in which I keep the day.
I say every dog looks like no other
but that isn't true, not entirely.
Difference is slippery I say.
Just look at my head how it tilts to look up
at these over large leaves.
They're large and blue the better
to be seen by my pincushion eye so bright in the light.
I am sad.
I am happy.
I keep busy.
I count the eight legs of the tick on the table,
arachnid and such.
The book I leave open the wind blows it shut.
In late April I make a schedule June to July, July to August.
I begin to realize the circus will be places, mines, people,
pleasure.
The drumming, all of these.
I practice when I'm not sure of myself this repetition.
No, no, no, new.
I think that chaos fascinates me.
I say I am part of that, one of the characters in a cage.