From "Meaningful Love" by John Ashbery
The Atlantic crawled slowly to the left
pinning a message on the unbound golden hair of sleeping maidens,
a ruse for next time,
where fire and water are rampant in the streets,
the gate closed—no visitors today
or any evident heartbeat.
The Cajun Critters chicken gushed openly to the first cousin
trapping the wrapper to the straggling wish of park rangers,
a guide for every time
where fire and water never do the trick,
"the gate closed-no visitors today"
or any use for the wildlife anymore.
* I am trying to make objects do unxpected actions.
Now, this is a little out there;
I have to admit, but I am so often giving things actions that are expected.
Trees are swaying everywhere and dogs are barking.
I am trying to use Ashbery to get me out of that habit.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI love this exercise that you have given yourself to find unexpected language. You have found some truly fresh images and revisited language in a new light. What really strikes me as interesting is:"the straggling wish of park rangers". A straggling wish is totally unexpected, at least for me, and I think that you could go even further with this exercise: the straggling wish of the gate, the straggling wish of chickens, of first cousins, of wildlife, and see where that exercise takes you from there. I would suggest to reconsider some other things in this draft too: fire and water never do the trick--fire and water is an expected combo and "never do[es] the trick is somewhat cliche. I think its awesome that realize a recurring "expectation(s)" in your drafts and you are addressing it through various other exercises. Sometimes, I've been told by other poets, that when you revise a draft it helps some days to not look at the whole thing, but put on your "verb glasses," or "syntax glasses," or "line break glasses,"--you get the point. Awesome work. I love what you've come up with here.