Monday, July 11, 2011

Speed Poems

Here are a couple samples of the "speed poems" we worked on this week by members of the workshop! In these poems, the speed of the activity described is mimicked by the pace of the writing itself through the manipulation of punctuation.

Running Out of Time (Rodrigo Garcia)

The ball is rolled out of bounce to conserve the time, it rolls, the other team notices the ball rolling and dash as line backers blitzing to retrieve the ball and just like that we pick up the ball at our free throw line and launch a pass to our center (10 seconds) surrounding him he throws the ball back in great desperation to keep the ball safe (5 seconds) he stands there for a quick moment noticing the whole entire opposing team dashing to him forgetting about everyone else only concentrating on the ball and he sees the open man on the base line three he launches it across (2.5 seconds) gets the ball and with the quick release time slows down and everyone, sees the shot soar, above them and, enter the basket the coach jumping and it's in the crowd screams with joy we hug our teammates with brotherly love.


Draw Quick (Alison O'Connor)

The song playing is Beautiful World by Eliza Gylkison
I move my pencil slow, softly, making a quick mark on the paper
Sketching the woman, Dawn, out.
The pencil is stiff in my hand.
Brush, back, forth. Erase. Stroke, float across the surface.
The shape of her rounded head, world weary features
Tumbled graying curls is all laid out. Time to get technical.

The song switches to Pop The Trunk by YelaWolf, tempo
Quickens, stabs jabs at the thick paper grow rapid evolve
into reckless beings manic slashings like I'm Jason Voorhees
With my 2H pencil shading back forth scritch scratch till
Darkests dark like pitch black form in the crevices and
Into the wise eyes of Dawn. Too dark.
I need to go back, take, deep, breaths.
Clear the cloudy graphite.

The next song is The Ruler's Back, a Slick Rick tune
With thump. Da thump thumps. Tinklings of piano keys.
I thud my eraser with a satisfying. Clash down, rubbing.
Rub, clash. Erck, thwack. Too light. Bring back the dark.
With the horns, eraser shuffles in an awkward side step.
Roughens notes across the pencil's barbed wire fence.
Made up of sharp, thorny lines. Eraser looks smudged
Like the paper it graced. In cautious beats of swag.
Need a gloomy song to end the piece. I realize, running
My thumb over the Ipod dial
to something depressing.

Lyida by Slaid Cleaves
a country downer closes the curtains
now I want this over with like a
slaughter want my piece wrapped up
in bows and wrappings in 3B 2B lead
lead the way lead the way with the sad
lonely gin soaked melody blaring through
your ears your crazed eyes gleam with insanity
go crazy get muts share there rub rub my thumb
right pointer finger in that spot
where nothing is shaded
cut deep into the pulp of the paper with my pencil.
The song gives way into melancholy lyrics.
Marks give way to toned down blurs.
A claming peace blossons across the paper.
Lines twinkle out into the dark abyss.
I created a woman's face. Finished.
The drawing. Complete. Pencils.
Away.
Lyida resumes until the last guitar string
is plucked.

No comments:

Post a Comment