RE: The End of the Twentieth Century [Day 1]
Oh! I'm so excited that you'll join the challenge! Reading this piece after hearing you speak of different aspects of your process today in class makes me wonder if you created a word map for this?
The reason why I'm curious is there is a very web-like, spiraling motion to this piece. Love how it fixates on and further develops certain ideas and phrases, "word, penny, thoughts, your eyes, etc." There is a sense of vertigo here - a bewilderment at the convolutions of our world and a need to discern an order therein.
I always connect deeply with poetry that addresses in total starkness our reality - and subtly peels away the surface for us to gaze deeper into the abyss - and what may lay beyond it.
Thank you so much for your contribution to this project already. It's been amazing so far.
multiple word maps, in fact, for this one - I wonder if I still have them somewhere...
yeah, a lot of times I attach cyclical motifs to expressions or messages in my wordmaps and try to create that connection in the context of the piece to convey this as best as I can through the weight of the phrase or word. Sometimes I do it better than others, but always happy when it works out as well as I was blessed for it to in this piece.
For me, I think words carry a lot of power beyond their meaning or use, conveyed in their history, their use in the past, the allusion of all the times that word was featured in something bigger than itself, and a meaning in their sound - the hard consonants, rolling delivery or jilted stagger; the calm against the calamity or a lilt before a prance. Maybe I'm crazy, but the weight seems tangible with so many words and it's something I try to be so conscious of.
It's funny because one of the things I always waffle with in this poem is if it ended up with an air of hope or not. You'd think, as the writer, it wouldn't depend on the day, but sometimes you look at something you write, I think, and immediately ask yourself "who wrote this?"
Cheers, my friend.