you and I
spread out against the sky
half-deserted
shells
What is it?
our visit.
a talking angel
yellow fog
there will be time
to prepare a face
murder and create
before
the women come.
I have known
the voices
the eyes
I have known
Arms braceleted
with light brown hair
lonely men in shirtsleeves
Asleep tired
stretched on the floor.
I have seen the eternal
and was afraid.
Prince, lord
Fool
I grow old
The mermaids
sing to me
in chambers
wreathed with seaweed
we drown.
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33 comments:
This is an exercise I did a couple years ago, where you take a given text or poem, and remove substantial parts of it (by crossing out the words on paper, or just using "highlight and cut" on the computer)in order to reveal a "new" text or poem. I call it a "decomposition," but there is probably another more formal name for this.
Oh my god, I love this so much. There's just so much invention here! The shadow of "Prufrock" remains, but this poem both transcends it and comments on the original text.
I am really moved by this, Peter. Mind if I try my own?
Charles: please do!
I've always preferred Pereira to Eliot.
Peter, this is great! Like Charles, I'm moved to do one, too. What will be neat to see is how different all of ours are (assuming he & I also do Prufrock)...are you only "allowed" to remove, keeping everything in sequence, or can you rearrange as well? What different poets do with the same words is one of my favorite things to read/see.
(I once tried to do a parody of Prufrock, Prufrock at my liberal college, not successul, but for:
In the rooms the women come and go,
talking of Michel Foucault [grin])
This really is fun.
And it (along w/ mention of him on POETICS-L today) reminded me of Ronald Johnson's RADI OS, composed by crossing out words and letters of Paradise Lost. Johnson keeps things in sequence and even retains the spacing of the original, underlying text. It has been out of print, though there are rumors of a reprint this month. Selections appear in To Do as Adam Did: Selected Poems from Talisman House.
Thanks R, E, R.
Sublibrarian: I am going to have to search out RADI OS. It sounds terrific. (I am a major Milton fan, from way back, college days; I did an essay once comparing some of the speeches of Satan (Lucifer?) in Paradise Lost and the poetry/music of Patti Smith).
Ok, here's my try (I kept phrases in order but cut out quite a bit)--
Let us
muttering
Let us
seeing
meet the days
of hands that lift
and drop and mounting
firmly simple
known already
known already
so peacefully
smoothed by fingers
wept and fasted
worth it after
all the sunsets
along the nerves I
am attendant
swell prince, wake
Emily: Wow. Nice exercise. Love this. A completely different poem from mine. Fascinating. There's a background voice or something that is similar; otherwise it's a new thing completely. It'll be fun to see what Charles or others come up with.
The half-deserted retreats,
one-night cheap hotels,
sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells,
Streets that follow a tedious argument.
You question us,
smoke into the corners of the evening—
a soft yellow upon the window-panes,
a hundred visions before it will be morning.
I time the evenings dying with music—
narrow windows across the seas stretched eternal.
I was afraid you would have the universe to say all one should
while sunsets trail along the floor.
This lantern, the nerves, a window
all lord one swell upon the beach,
each sing to me the white hair of the wind, the water
black in the chambers wreathed with human voices.
Excision and punctuation changes only, I promise.
The Hate Song of Mrs. Prufrock
(for Emily Lloyd)
1 (internal monologue)
let go then, you
like a table muttering
sawdust
arguments in women come &
go
2 (alfred)
fog the window
smoke
tongue the corners of the evening
once
about the house, asleep
3 (chorus)
indeed the yellow street
will murder
days that drop your plate
time for you & time for
come &
go
4 (alfred)
turn back & descend
the bald morning coat
mounting firmly to the chin
in a minute there is time
for decisions and revisions which
5 (mrs. prufrock)
the music from a farther room
I have known them all
pinned & wriggling on the wall
I have gone at dusk & watched
the lonely ragged claws
the afternoon sleeps so peacefully
6 (internal monologue)
stretched on the floor should
I have wept & wept &
in short, I was afraid.
7 (mrs. prufrock)
among the porcelain, among some talk
would it have been worth while
to have bitten off the
matter
with a smile?
8 (chorus)
glad to be of use?
a bit obtuse?
grow old… grow old &
drown
I apologize if anyone is offended by my deconstruction-poem.
Thanks for this exercise, Peter.
AD, AJ, Woody: What amazing fun! I love them all. I'll have to try a new one, too, though you have all set the bar pretty high.
What an excellent writing exercise. Decomposition. I like it. A lot. And I love how every person attempting it ends up with a completley different poem despite working from the same text. Might have to give this a shot myself. Did you create this exercise yourself, Peter? It'd be an excellent tool to use in a creative writing class.
Laurel: I don't know where it is from. After Ron's post on Ronald Johnson's RADI OS (a book-length poem composed in 1977 by crossing out words and letters of Paradise Lost) I researched a little. It has been variously called a "Carved Poem" and an "Erased Poem." But I have no clear idea of its origin, yet.
Wow. Talk about complete right-brain submersion (right is creative, left is analytical, correct?). Good, good exercise, Peter. I enjoyed it muchly. Here's my stab at it:
Yellow, Yellow
Let us go (spread out,
etherized). Let us
go (half-deserted, muttering) .Restless,
let us: (go and go,
talking) (yellow, yell-
ow) fall upon
the soot that falls (soft)
about the house rubbing
upon panes, faces, and days that lift
(and drop);
turn back (and descend) bald,
thin, morning mounting
thin; disturb evenings, mornings,
afternoons measured out,
dying, dying.
From a farther room, eyes, pinned
and wriggling spit out arms.
Arms (in lamplight downed
With hair); arms
that lie. Dusk,
narrow and watched, rises
from the pipes, lonely,
leaning out, scuttling,
silent. Evening, smoothed
by long fingers, tired,
malingers stretched out on the floor
here, (beside you and me)
(I wept and wept, afraid) a Lazarus
come from the dead (after
sunsets that trail
along the floor) settling, turning toward
the window (old, old) that will sing
till we drown.
OMG, Laurel: this is amazing!
I think you have shuffled the order of some of the words/phrases a little? A great variation.
Nope, absolutely no shuffling. I think that's why I was submerged. It took a lot of concentration to use the words in their correct order and not mess with them. I think it'd be an excellent way of studying a poem in a creative writing class because it really does demand close, close attention to the text. I've always loved Prufrock, but honestly I feel like I love the poem in a whole new way now having roamed around inside Eliot's creation. Every word felt like a relic dug up that had to be brushed off and held up to the light in order to really appreciate it.
I'm so in love with this exercise.
Standing in Front of His Looking-Glass,
J. Alfred Prufrock Imagines the Comb-Over
Curled once, now with a bald spot
in my hair (They will say, How his
hair is growing thin!) Now, in lamp-
light, lightly downed with ragged
hair, smoothed by long fingers, I have
seen my head, grown slightly bald, have
seen my hair stretched out like a shawl...
That is not it, not what I meant
at all! Politic, cautious, and
Meticulous—at times, indeed,
almost ridiculous, almost
at times the Fool, I grow old…
I grow old...I part my hair behind,
combing the white waves back.
I love this idea, but I'm behind at work. I'll have to try this later.
I love the ones here.
This is a great exercise, and it made me wonder about its opposite: What if we “un-Pounded” The Waste Land and imagined how it might have been if it had been written in a style more like Prufrock? In the Facsimile Edition of The Waste Land, it’s awfully interesting to see Eliot’s original version. It’s a very different poem from the final Waste Land, but it’s a good poem! Some passages almost sound like they could be from one of Robert Frost’s poems like “The Hired Man”:
I’ve kept a clean house for twenty years, she says ...;
You was well introduced, but this is the last of you.
Get me a woman, I said; you’re too drunk, she said,
But she gave me a bed, and a bath, and ham and eggs ...
That’s a far cry from the final Waste Land:
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu
but I wouldn’t mind reading that ham-and-eggs poem too!
Laurel: Even more amazing, knowing you have left the words in order! Kudos.
Anonymous: Brilliant. I love it; the hair theme is hysterical; perhaps the poem was really all due to Eliot's "bad comb-over" anxiety; even up to the mermaids.
We could make an anthology of these.
Okay, I couldn't resist. I tried it too. And it was kind of fun. I had forgotten how much I love this poem.
I...just...can't.
-Diane (who "did" Eliot for her master's orals...)
LOL, Diane--I think that's why I cut out so very, very much. I promise never to play you my folk-rock rearrangement of the Waste Land ("Girl, Why Do You Never Speak?" [grin])
Robert: I can't hear Eliot read the twits, jugs, and "so rudely forc'd" without cracking up. His voice just--oh. Though I'm not sure whose voice would work better.
Peter: now here's a meme that even those poets that don't like memes will take to! Thanks again for starting us.
Fun party . . . thanks for coming. I still want to know who "anonymous" is; who wrote the fantastic one about the comb-over. Reveal yourself??
I'm the "de-composer" of the comb-over. I started reading your blog about 3 months ago and have tried several of the exercises. I'm glad you liked the results of this one.
I'm a medical transcriptionist who lives and works in Kentucky.
Great exercise! Here's the first section of The Waste Land, decomposed...
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
April is the cruelest month, breeding
out of dead desire, rain.
Winter kept us in forgetful snow.
Life surprised us the in the colonnade,
and went on in sunlight, and I was frightened.
He said, "There, you feel free."
A stony heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
and no relief, but "I will show you
something different from either your striding or rising."
I will show *you* the hyacinth girl, wisest woman in Europe—
the lady of situations, walking round in a ring.
Under the brown fog of sighs,
each man fixed his eyes before his feet,
with a dead sound on the final stroke.
---------------------
This strikes me as an excellent device for examining the rhythms of free verse. One might have students read their decompositions alongside the original and listen to how the rhythm changes (or, as in the example above, falls apart completely).
Thanks, Peter!
Pamela, Ginger: fun stuff. I will have to try this with a class at Centrum this summer. It looks like "The Wasteland" will be fertile ground for decomposing! (wink)
Welcome to the party, BS.
My favorite lines:
"spit out all
I have known"
and
"we have lingered
wake us"
Thanks for trying this (glad you "dared").
claws...
cruellest...
Gongula...
--& then there's Tom Phillips's A Humument.
m.
Do pardon my tardiness..but... Seamus has dared me...here's my run at it......
1. The Love rock
LET us.
Spread out a table.
Let us.
Deserted streets,
The muttering night argument.
Intent.
Overwhelming.
“What is it?”
Go.
In the room. Talking.
The window-panes,the window-panes.
The corners lingered. Falls.
A sudden leap.
Seeing.
Once.
There will be the street, the window-panes.
There will be, there will be the faces.
There will be murder.
The hands.
Lift and drop me.
A hundred visions before the taking.
In the room. Go.
Talking.
There will be wonder.
Do I turn back and descend, in the middle ?
They will say, firmly.
Asserted, they will say, I disturb a minute.
A minute will reverse.
I have known them. Known them.
Have known.
I have my life.
Dying,
Beneath the music.
How should I have known?
Known.
The eyes that
I am,
When I am I.
Then how should I
My ways
Presume?
And I have known , known them all—
Arms bare in the lamplight.
It is perfume that makes me lie.
Should I ?
How should I say ?
I have gone, watched.
Lonely.
I should have been.....
Silent.
Peacefully smoothed.
Asleep beside you.
Should I
Have ?
I have wept and prayed.
Though I have seen my matter.
I have seen.
I have seen.
I was afraid.
Would it have been
After?
Would it have been a smile?
Squeezed.
Overwhelming.
Say.
I shall tell you.
If one Should say, all.
Would it have been?
Would it have been sunsets? Dooryards?
The streets,the novels, the teacups, the floor ?
And this,
To say.
In patterns,
Would it have been worth one, settling?
Turning ? Say,
all.
That is all.
I am
One.
Or two,no doubt.
Glad,of use,
Cautious, and high
At times.
At times,
I grow. I grow.
I shall.
Shall I walk ?
Singing, I do not think.
I have seen the waves,
The waves blown back When the wind blows the water.
The sea wreathed with voices.
Wake us.
Drown.
Thanks for calling me over to play...big fellah....
Doc.
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