Saturday, January 6, 2007

Bird One: Lessons in Who-Made-Who

My week's deadline (Saturday@Midnight) is fast approaching and I thought for a good while I'd fail before even beginning. So, I threw myself a bit of a softball -- couldn't face the dreaded "blank page" -- needed those training wheels to take the first step... Mixed metaphors aside... I feel good to have followed through.

My personal rules for a "ransom note" poem such as this are that all of the words must come from a single, citable source, and that all words must be "whole" words (as opposed to a letter sequence, or mashed-together syllables snipped from inside larger words), with the exception of articles and tiny prepositions (e.g. a, an, to) needed for coherence. I also believe in the importance of a visually balanced layout.

The impetus for this project came from Learning to Love You More -- a site I suspect I will revisit many times during this project. A cut-and-paste poem is not one of the assignments, but I thought of it while looking at Assignment #44: Make a "LYTLM Assignment," in which someone suggested a kind of "30-minute paint/collage free-for-all."

The magazine from which this poem sprung was ReadyMade, April/May 2006. It was somewhat challenging to compose, because the title and caption text was pretty limited in terms of scope and style. The text that emerged seems to be something of an homage to the momentum/change I am trying to instill.

So, it's a start... I hope a kindred spirit, or a reader or two will pass this way sometime...

(Click the image to view a larger version of the poem).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yer amazing.
Love, Me

Anonymous said...

That one flies. I want to see the next one you kick out of the nest.

Anonymous said...

You're goin' places girl! I can feel it!

Anonymous said...

It surely doesn't feel like anything was "limited" here! I was thinking, oh, how great that she was able to find exactly what she needed for what she needed to say!