So I found the book closest to me, which happened to be a Little Mermaid storybook of my niece's, and took the first, third, sixth and ninth words on each page to make a poem.
The sparkled sea shell-and-pearl
Ariel's father Triton ruler
King throne iridescent his
Ariel six names with
"A" sisters beautiful sing
Sweet kind friends undersea
Friends crabs baby whale
Swim with friends treasure
Friends the fish Sebastian
Though important King director
Sebastian for always keep
When about slow Sebastian
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Catherine,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your poem - and not just because I loved the Little Mermaid when I was younger (ok, I still do). What I loved about it was that it was random, but still coherent. I think the fact that you took the first, third, sixth, and ninth words from each page really helped make your piece more fluid. I think if you had just taken every fifth word (like I did in my poem) it would have come out more choppy. While I definitely see why some Dadaists thought chaos was an appropriate expression for their movement, I think I prefer the coherent chaos of your piece. Nice work.
Yes, there really is something coherently chaotic about it--nice phrase, Kayla.
ReplyDeleteI like the subtle, jagged music of "iridescent his / Ariel six names with / "A" sisters beautiful sing / sweet kind friends." The music is not just sonic (though it is that too, in the alternation of A's and S's and the general progression of vowel sounds), but also in the spatial syntax of the linebreaks, the quotation marks around the "A," etc.
It's a bit short: I wonder what you could do to expand it without moving beyond the source text? What if you cycled back through it using different mathematical patterns to pick out the words until you've exhausted the vocabulary of the book?
I agree with Kasey in that the first few lines made me re-read the procedure thinking "I could have sworn she said the first sixth and ninth word of each page". I definitely think for our assignment this was a great search and find but it might also be fun to have a series of these poems using different books. It seems funny that it ends with "When about slow sebastion" and in my head I added a question mark at the end. I liked the work.
ReplyDeleteThis was fun and I enjoyed reading this light poem that was from one of my favorite stories when I was a child. It is interesting how it all comes together in the end. Bits and pieces reminding us of a familar story. I like this idea and am curious how a poem would sound with the word choice spread out even further.
ReplyDeleteI agree with many of you about the fact that the poem is so short and ends in a weird place, but that is the risk of this style of poem. I was thinking, if I could find the book amongst the hundreds of other mermaid books my niece owns, maybe I could take the first word of each page as one line, and then the second as the second line, and then the third as the third line etc. And then maybe try and form it in a kind of sestina, that way I could have the randomness of the Dadist poem and the structure that I like.
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