Poem Project and Marginalia

A few friends and I are participating in a writing challenge. 7 lines per day, 7 days, 1 poem. As a way to focus the poems, we are all choosing an image from which we can cull a word-bank. I've decided to draw new words from the image every day of the challenge, as I learn to see it more clearly. This first day my word bank points to the recording of shapes, marks, images, but not the idea of the thing.



My image is by Matthew Barney, a drawing with vinyl, graphite, and petroleum jelly in a self-lubricating frame (I have seen this in person and I am still not sure what that means or does). The image is titled "TRANSEXUALIS incline (manual)." I love the use of caps, italics, and parenthesis in the title. Though I think it relates more to the installation it would help shape, I like thinking of the text itself and how such an economical title can still incorporate such particular facets of punctuation and (type setting?).

As I start this seven day project, I think I will use this space to record the residuals of the process here: the actual word banks, the bank itself with the words cut out, to see if it amounts to anything. (For the poem or other projects or my own amusement.)

words removed

day 1 word bank

Collaborative writing prompts allow for access to writing that writers scarcely allow. We share the initial writing, the moments before polishing. The raw sketch of it. I have always been interested in the idea that writers are so protective of and private about their process, whereas artists in other fields may not be. It is perfectly acceptable for an artist to include initial sketches as part of a greater exhibition (as Matthew Barney did for the show this drawing appears in, All in the Present Must Be Transformed). If a visual artist can exhibit this vulnerability, and appreciate that the spark of the idea is as noble as the polished and transformed things, can writers do the same? What about a reading that consists of all the various drafts of a piece (get on this, Kenneth Goldsmith), encompassing both minor changes and complete re-visions?

Maybe I ought to share all of it here--not just the residuals as I previously mentioned, but the initial text too, perhaps handwritten with words crossed out or erased, lines struck through and added in--an experiment to see what it can amount to.