fluffysingler's blog

These are three links from Newspaper Blackout Poems (2), which we will be using for this week, and Bernadette Meyer's and Charles Bernstein's Experiments List, from which I drew for some of the exercises. This list is widely available in various forms on the internet. I will also update my own list of experiments and post them on here as well, but that will probably be after the class.

Hey everyone! This week is our last class. I would love to see 12 bright shiny faces at class -- so even if you haven't come to one before, come to this one! Also we'll be doing evaluations for the class, so come and fill out an evaluation and just meet people!

Here's our group poem from this week:

The last tie I went to a funeral, I couldn't believe what I saw.
Three clowns were marching up and down the aisle
whisper under tehir breaths about whose nose what reddest and whose shoes loudest.
Tapp shoes are loud, loud and tappy. Tappy -- is that even a word?
My mind often diverges in such a way
twisting and turning, my thoughts
began to manifest in the expression of my neighbors eyebrows, as my fingers --
eyebrows are odd things. They're there for what?
To catch things before they fall into your eyes?

Here are some links to articles that I gave out this week that I thought would be interesting to everyone. They're by Kenneth Goldsmith, a poet who recently read at the White House and who teaches poetry and "uncreative" writing. I got to hear him talk at the Poetry Center in Arizona a few years ago.

http://www.ubu.com/papers/kg_ol_goldsmith.html

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/maclow_boredom.html

Hi everyone. Here is this week's exquisite corpse. What's an exquisite corpse? If you don't know, then come to the workshop and find out. We have two deliriously fun sessions left!

I open the door and no one.
I looked at chaos on my shoulder
and I wiped that chaos to the floor
like theologians watering mouthful of moss.

I flourish like fauna
folding, flowering in the flowing wind.
Look at what you've made me do
and I loved every second of it
and every bird that breathed loved it too.

We are alive, because we love and despair.

Here is the group poem that we wrote last week for class:

People with no thoughts, only
the ones who keep clouds inside their heads
with potato-colored mustaches
and also moustache-colored potatoes

We're at monterey and woodstock, green beards and Jimi Hendrix . . .
Janis Joplin screams her alcoholic nightmares into the mic.
Her dreams are lovely, her nightmares fantastic.

Sleeping at night has become more than a pastime,
as parting has become an event.
Let's plan in. Let's put it on the calendar.
Let's all celebrate the old ways, yes, on the calendar and know and remember
that time changes nothing.

____________________________

Intrigued? Still time to drop in on the class, Wednesday nights at 6:00 at the Book House in Dinkytown.