Semi-Urban Cartography

One Google Searches for "Experimental Poetry" and Gets This

I spent most of this cold, fog laden Sunday morning in an attempt to reconcile old poetry. I keep a stack of pieces to reflect on close at hand in case their muse wants to bite again. It’s like so many ghost stories being retold. Frequently enough though the riddle has a way of unlocking itself by a simple passing glance.

My writing week splits on one primary divide: during the week I attend to my primary project (usually a screenplay or fiction work) while on the weekend, I devote myself to notes, experiments, this blog, the onerous exhumation of the indulgent imagination. This is a relatively new discipline but one that was born out of necessity. It’s been only the last few months that I’ve sensed the need to have “free time” or play, as it might be better described. When I’m not working on my main project I can fool around with language and words — by giving myself this time, I don’t feel so tied to writing one thing. I can make a mess while keeping full my accordian file of fits and starts full. Besides, being this sort of writer is fun once in a while.

This morning I found a new piece in that indulgent imagination: “Phrases Of Dream”. It’s a poem/experiment in three parts. They loosely track an imagined experience in a one bedroom Hawthorne apartment (started as London apartment but that quickly fell away: too specific, Hawthorne can be anywhere). There have been many people in the room. First it describes the room and then some pieces of conversation that took place there and finally the fever that breaks the dream and returns the narrator to a waking state. As described, it sounds simplistic, however, there feels like a lot of potential there.

Two weeks ago I watched a woman across the bar as she watched football. She had a distinct twitch of her nose when she got excited that seemed unique to me. I imaged though what it would be like if that twitch were familiar or was becoming familiar. It is to someone, after all, and will be to others with time. From that Sunday on, I began to see people on the street, on the bus, in the halls in a similar way. I’d find one mannerism that was uniquely theirs only to imagine the experience of it becoming familiar to me. Profound exercise? Not exactly. It does, however, open imaginary doors into the very fabric of poetry: words and relationships and intimacy.

If I trace back further this burgeoning preoccupation, perhaps it was the man in the Florence train station bathroom who bathed himself in the corner sinks. Perhaps the girl on the northbound train from Bologna who undressed from her night clothes on the lower bunk of our couchette. I was transfixed at how they allowed a distant stranger into the intimate details of their ritual.

Maybe the voices of all those men sleeping in doorways, carrying laundry across the street, telling their story in experience have finally found a place in my work. That would be a breakthrough. It would be one much hungered after breakthrough in the search for a prevailing subject. A poet must know the angle into their moments.