Lovely love
Posted: July 3, 2015 Filed under: process, the words | Tags: anagrams, endearments, love, love wins, my little love, nanopoems, process, words Leave a commentI have avoided including words in the endearments that give the final endearment away—so, no lovely in my little love. If such a word appears in an anagram, though, that seems fine. No surprise is lost.
Thus a set of nanopoems, from my little love. They might look like they’re an even match for each other. They might—except love wins. Another word from my little love: mettle.
mottle evilly
tilt me lovely
Proposition and experiment
Posted: December 9, 2011 Filed under: objects | Tags: audience, broadsides, cats, design, endearments, figure, lolcats, poetic objects, sharing Leave a commentI. Many people will not, of their own accord, look at a poem.
II. Millions of people will, of their own accord, spend lots and lots of time looking at photographs of cats.
III. Therefore, earlier this year, I concluded that the best strategy for increasing the number of viewers for poems would be to print them on top of photographs of cats.
IV. I happen to like looking at both poems and cats.
V. So this is, for me, a win-win situation.
VI. Fortunately, my own cat is a patient model, and (if I am to be believed) quite photogenic.
VII. The aforementioned cat is Tisko Tansi, small hero.
VII. Thus I present to you (albeit in digital rather than physical form) an Endearments broadside, featuring a poem that originally appeared in BlazeVOX spring 2011.
VIII. If you want to share a copy of this image, please ask first. If you want a real copy, you can ask about that too.
Poetic objects
Posted: December 7, 2011 Filed under: objects | Tags: audience, beloved, broadsides, design, endearments, figure, poetic economies, poetic objects, sharing, visual Leave a commentThe endearments lend themselves particularly to the world of things. At least, I have found it easier to work with them visually than with other poems of late. I’ve printed them on top of old photographs, and on the pages of old natural-history textbooks. And I’ve printed them on top of newer images too. These objects, even the digitally created ones, are of the physical world rather than the virtual one. This is important. In an essay for Fringe, “On Poetic Objects and Poetic Economies,” I consider the advantages and challenges of bringing poems into the visual world:
If I could think of the poems as objects, I said to a friend, a visual artist, this past spring, they would take up as much room as objects do in my mind, and then I would need fewer things in my life. Fewer artifacts waiting to become art.
After exploring cheap art, poems on cards, broadsides, I allow myself a bit of exhortation on these objects’ behalf:
After it’s had the chance to live online a while, affix your poem to a page. One you can give out, or barter for snacks or a drink, or sell for a few bucks. . . . And if you are one of the fine folks who are doing something like this already, for your own work or for that of others, in your living room or in a letterpress studio, I applaud you. Don’t stop. . . .
Make it. Allow it to exist in time, and try again. And try new things, and get better.
It’s easier to get away with such imperatives if you’ve followed your own advice. In the case of poetic objects, though, the physical evidence necessarily has a smaller audience than the html-encoded call to action. So I am offering a partial fix. Shortly I’ll post the digital iteration of a broadside I made of the “beloved” endearment. I printed it on pale grey, textured paper, and I handed it out at the 2011 West Chester University poetry conference. Now it will live here too, but it is better in person.
What do you call what’s dear to you?
Posted: March 3, 2011 Filed under: process, the words | Tags: constraints, endearments, procedure Leave a commentI use a lot of names that are not names: sweetheart, sugar, peaches, darling. I can’t lay claim to the entire phenomenon, of course, but I like it. In order to explore what these not-names contain, I have been making little poems of them.
Here I will think about the words, the poems, about love and the lack of it, and whatever else the endearments suggest. Preliminary findings indicate that these things may include vowels, flowers, disgust, awkward situations, various foods, cats, and the ocean. The poems will not be visible here—think of them as the shadows behind your computer screen as you read this; or, think of this page as a shadow of the poems.
If you’d like to tell me what you call what you love, I would love to know. I have a little collection going.
endearments 