dbqp: visualizing poetics: March 2011

April Approacheth

April, the cruelest month (at least to poets), arrives at the end of this week, and with it comes the Fourth International Pwoermd Writing Month (InterNaPwoWriMo IV). As usual, I will celebrate by posting at least one pwoermd a day to the InterNaPwoWriMo blog, which lies fallow for eleven months of the year in order to be ready for a full month's bloom in April.

Also as usual, I am looking for others to join me in celebrating this month. Last year, there were eighteen other participants in a number of countries and writing in various languages. Any language is acceptable, and visual pwoermds (like ƏC's above) are encouraged. So the only limit to this poems is that they can be no more than one word long and cannot have a title besides the title they themselves are.

Mar

eligibible

Mar

continguous

Mar

A Poetics (85-86)

85. Reference (# 77)

«Ce sont les mots mêmes que le Bourgeois lit tous les matins, les mêmes! Mais voilà: s’il lui arrive de les retrouver en tel mien poème, il ne les comprend plus.»

—Stéphane Mallarmé

86. Pleasure

To succeed, a poem must provide pleasure. Pleasure comes in many forms, but always through the mind. The poem must please the reader, but the only reader that must matter to the poet is the poet. The poet’s mantra: “I please myself. I pleasure myself.”

ecr. l'inf.

Mar

(ye)she(yes)he

Mar

canonbal

Mar

Poetics (84 Alone)

84. Lie

Does the voice make a lie of the poem? Because a good voice can make a weak poem seem strong and a poor voice can ruin a great poem. Is the poem isolated on the page (the screen) the most accurate version of the poem, true to itself, or does the voice we use to read it in our heads also ruin great poems and resurrect the dead ones?

ecr. l'inf.

Mar

inguished

Mar

camouflag

Mar

A Poetics (81-83)

81. Memorization

Memorization is not the act of remembering but the process of creating a memory, specifically an exact memory of a thing, usually a text, and it bears with it the sense that the act of creation is one that is rote and forced, something you do because it is good for you. To memorize a poem may be to love it, but it may better be a way to kill it, to remove the life from it, to make it a thing so known as to become invisible and silent.

dbqp: visualizing poetics

visual poetry, the textual imagination, and personal experience