[stylist] experimental writing

[Barbara Hammel]

Your answer helps tremendously.  Maybe I'll just go and become so superbly 
above the rest of you because I can write some ridiculous stuff that makes 
no sense.  Kind of like impressionist paintings, methinks.  However it would 
probably be good to do for exercises when your brain has gone on the fritz.
Barbara

If wisdom's ways you wisely seek, five things observe with care:  of whom 
you speak, to whom you speak, and how and when and where.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "John Lee Clark" <johnlee at clarktouch.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 12:17 PM
To: "'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] experimental writing

> Barbara:
>
> The simplest definition of experimental poetry is stuff that doesn't make
> sense.
>
> Definition B is that it makes you feel stupid.
>
> But experimental poets are focused on words and the mechanics of language,
> playing with parts of it, like they're playing a "challenge" game.  Ii 
> dare
> you to write a poem sixteen lines long without once using the letter T. 
> Or
> you write a poem with each line ending with a word and a hyphen because 
> that
> word is only the first part of another word, and the second half begins 
> the
> next line, like:
>
> We're not like-
> Ly to find any so-
> Lace in Poe-
> Try as we might.
>
> Or you have poets who capitalize letters in the middle of words, like if
> you're playing with the idea of the color red, you might capitalize the R 
> in
> words like winteRed and hundRed and kindRed.
>
> Or you use parentheses to give certain words double meaning.  Like
> fa(r)ther--and in a line where both words, father and farther, would make
> some sort of sense.
>
> Or you mess with grammar.  The title of a recent book, for example, is
> "Grace, Fallen from."
>
> But most of it I don't bother with reading at all.  There are just some
> people who love it, for both "wrong" reasons, like they get to feel smart
> but they're not really, and for obscure intellectual reasons, rebelling
> against the nature of conversational language.  Many, many times some
> popular poets would play a prank on the experimentalists by writing up a
> storm of crap, calling it a name with -ism as its suffix, and true enough
> the experimentalists would all get all excited with this new "movement" 
> and
> start having conferences and stuff . . . only to discover it was just a
> bunch of regular poets writing random crap to mock them.
>
> It is only rarely that something really neat comes along from the
> experimental front.  And many non-experimental poets have fun playing 
> around
> a little.  Take my poem "Blind Bind" for an example.  It is full of words
> whose second letter is L and it's still a word without that L.  The first
> lines, to give you an idea, read:
>
> Why is my bladder growing
> Badder? Banks
> Love to give me blanks.
>
> I do not wish to bend
> To blend in, yet I try not to
> Clash with cash.
>
>
> I hope this is helpful.  If not, Ii can look for some wildly experimental
> work and paste it here.
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Barbara Hammel
> Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 9:02 PM
> To: stylist
> Subject: [stylist] experimental writing
>
> I was listening to newsline to the poet and writing or whatever that
> magazine is there and it mentioned that slice magazine doesn't accept
> experimental writing.  I was just wondering what that is.  I've never 
> heard
> the term before.
> Barbara
>
> If wisdom's ways you wisely seek, five things observe with care:  of whom
> you speak, to whom you speak, and how and when and where.
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