Poems rescued from text
This week’s rescued piece is from The true dynamics of life by Mike Robinson (p472) and The pleasure of finding things out by Richard P Feynman (p137).
The observed effect
Listen stillness figured
atomic healer
how arranged life then
human mass
spiritual machine
self-knowledge synthesised
principled pay-off seduces life forces
chemical copies
mysterious physics are forces exactly as I observe.
Violated hidden parasites
inspire silence.
This week’s rescued piece is from Notebooks 1970-2003 by Murray Bail (p272) and Mind Lines by L Michael Hall and Bobby G Bodenhamer (p75).
Lines o’ the mind
Fingerprint painting meaning-maker
imprisoning metaphors
in small boxes
in hollow palaces;
command your queen
to initiate distinctions,
to understand magic signals,
liberate meaning
from difficult reality,
walls of limitations
determine casual grandeur:
smell your reframing choices
enrich your own box of magic.
This week’s rescued piece is from Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane (p105) and Flying the Kite by John Button (p31). Enjoy!
Dark kite
Fifty of the fattest
clumped hands
grabbed
petals of roses
on sacred rolling waves
in California.
An economy possessed.
Broken spirals
dashed arms
whirling in whitedown waters
clean cheeks
and fuck the flatter father
shocked the children.
Brothers, mothers, sobbing
a million marines marching
Jesus’s sacred tabernacle
angrily stripped
pickaxed
in red cement.
In Australia
an array of undernourished millionaires
panic.
This little rescue-ee is from Eva Luna by Isabel Allende (p217) and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (p207).
Curious room
Beneath the hoping measured
narrow echoey train
was roar roar
was stutter stutter.
Machines in rows,
silently fluorescent.
Spindle factory,
quota weighed.
Damn bitches
in windowless cubicles
served the silent treatment.
Lipstick, ribbons, makeup, hair creams, boots, skirts
never paper-wrapped gestures.
Unappetising lunchroom leftovers:
beans and custard creams.
Walls that wear eyes.
I rescued this poem from This is not a novel by Jennifer Johnston (p33) and If on a winter’s night a traveller by Italo Calvino (p148).
perfect pushed-pulled champions of the sea
scorching first;
rinsed towel
squeezed uneasiness
gentle ghost
brushed
wiped down dismay
dry half-felt wet
under well eyes
somehow the naturalness of tears drown
rippling recognised
faceless but familiar
watching silent shadow lingered
indifferent to the moment
It’s that time of the week again!
I rescued this poem from Disgrace by J M Coetzee (p27) and The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (p193). What do you think? Or maybe I should ask how you feel.
Disgrace
Beer fingers pressed
his face towers
leaning like a lover
whispering wary affairs
        murmurs         no
        whispers         no
raise sweater
rip singlet
kick shoes
slip stockings
        says         no
        repeats         no
wracked forehead, mouth, shoulders, arms, hands, wrists, fists, buttocks, legs, ankles
        snarls         no
        crying         no
clinking movement
honey drinking
warm unfurled crushed will
                no
                no
heavy hands stroke folds
looped to bottles of misery
snake uncurled, hard against belly
intoxicating rock of female
clasped to a basket of heat
perforated prisoner
twitched, transfixed, then flicker
suddenly the idea of ice, blackening, double-towered, in waves
reared storm tilting soundlessly, quickly.
        Repeat         no.
        Meant         no.
Dead-man’s-fingers cover absence.
I rescued this short and sharp poem from End of the Night Girl by Amy Matthews (p61) and Mastery by George Leonard (p122).
Mastery of the night
Sometimes we breathe miracles.
Sometimes we thank black larcenous fuck
chewing curiosity on the couch,
lacking dark remorse
strangling charms
peeing persuasiveness;
every phony Einstein
catches nervous villains and depressed psychopaths:
from drunk to superhuman
let’s toast the holy hero.
I rescued this poem from Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (p115) and Secret Wisdom – Occult societies and arcane knowledge through the ages by Ruth Clydesdale (p148).
Note: ‘jakes’ is pronounced ‘jacks’. It’s an old Irish slang word for ‘toilet’.
Asylum renovations
Her alchemy torments the planets,
his philosophy:
sour sweepings
from desperate universal truths pamphlets;
the lunatics, understanding divinity, drink hard.
Meanwhile,
        teihr wolrd reraangred
their asylum
protected
they throw themselves reality
bake     flour       bake
pints         drink                 pints
loaves
        and
        drinks;
now, drinking champion
One of our writing exercises in uni last semester (thank you Amy) was to create a collage poem. This was based on exercises from chapter four, ‘Writing as Recycling’, from The Writing Experiment, Strategies for innovative creative writing by Hazel Smith.
We had to copy a slab of text from a random page from two books into a Word document and print it out. Then we had to cut out each word using a scissors, mix up the words, select words from the jumble and assemble a new piece of text as a poem.
I modified the process to make it more efficient: I found a nice online word scrambler here and avoided the messy, fiddly cutting and sorting part of the process.
I was intrigued by the result. I prefer to call the resulting poem a ‘rescued’ poem instead of a ‘found’ poem or a collage. It’s more dramatic, isn’t it? I feel that the poem is hiding and that it’s my job to look for it using this special recovery mechanism.
Some poems are so thrilled to be rescued that they jump out and do a little jig; others are hesitant or shy and need plenty of encouragement and time. (You see, we can make a story out of anything!)
My rescued poems are different from the poems I usually write. They are dense and jagged; I like to think that they are a bit unstable and could freak out at any moment.
To honour my rescued darlings (rather than killing them) I intend to start a ‘Rescue Tuesdays’ post on this site.
Every Tuesday I will post one of my rescued poems, so bookmark this site and remember to visit each week. Better still, subscribe to the newsfeed to be notified when I update the site.
Tune in on Tuesday 28 February for the first rescued poem.