Shoplifting (in the supermarket of the senses)
©S. Ingraham and lightshedder.com
We next build off the Picture Poems exercise—expanding the concept of collecting resonant images (as the photographer does), to collecting all kinds of sense experience (as the poet does).
“If photographers go through the world, through life, looking for resonate images, for scenes and situations that contain meaning, that move us to make meaning, then the poet goes through life looking and listening, tasting and touching and smelling out the meaning in the world around us. The poet is always awake and aware, using his or her senses to explore the world, looking for anything that might make a good poem, anything that has meaning or can be made into meaning. It is as though the whole world, life itself, were a huge shopping mall for the poet’s senses, and the poet goes out with his or her shopping cart every day and collects any and everything that makes an impression.”
They need some special encouragement to listen for poems in what they are saying and in what other’s are saying to them. “Since poetry is made of language, the poet is especially always listening carefully to what people say and how they say it. The poet collects sound-bites. You know what a sound bite is?” Discussion. What are they? How are they used? How do they get chosen? Some will not be familiar with the term. You many have to key them in to their own memories, but sound bite is such a vivid term in itself, especially as it is so apt for what the poet is listening for, that it is worth some discussion. “The poet is always listening for the turn of phrase or the vivid or unusual way of saying something that might turn into a poem.” I might read them the over-heard poem from Poem Crazy, and I generally read them one of my own poems based on something someone said in class (since it is somewhat apt as well).
For Josie
Josie says, “How come you don’t write poems about us any more?”
her brow furrowed and ernest as only Josie can be
as she leans across the table, shifting in her seat,
searching for the comfort that constantly eludes her.
“I mean, have you written any poems, I kinda miss that.”There is a murmur of assent around the room
and I, of course, couldn’t be more delighted.
This is Josie, after all, who claims to have no poetry in her.“Oh yes, I say, I write poems everyday, but not always about you.
You want to hear this mornings?”And I read it to them:
a somewhat intentionally obscure piece about anticipation
and a dream, flirting with the edge of mystery,
barely coherent, rich, I think, in its unresolved tension.
Not, I expect, what they wanted to hear.
And I feel a little guilty.What they don’t understand is that they make the poems.
I just write them down.But, seeing Josie’s face there, I have to consider the possibility
that I haven’t been listening closely enough these past weeks,
that I have been too busy flirting with my own mysteries and anticipation,
projecting myself too far beyond the moment
to pay proper attention.How many poems have I missed now?
Was anyone listening?
Are they gone forever?
(Where do poems go that don’t get written down?)It makes me feel like maybe I haven’t been doing my job.
Sorry Josie, for you, I’ll try to do better.
Starting right now!Of course, when I have really done my job
it will be Josie who writes the poem down.
“So what we are going to do is take a little walk and do some shopping
for images and sense impressions: things you see, things you hear, things that
you touch, things that you smell. You need to be able to write them down, so
either bring a notebook, or fold a piece of paper 4 ways so it is stiff enough
to write on...” I demonstrate... “and write down anything that impresses
you as we walk. Look, listen, smell, touch, taste. Reach out with all your senses.
Don’t try to make a poem. Just write down what you think might make a poem.
Then we will come back and work with what you have collected to see if we can
find some poems in it.”
I lay some ground rules for the walk. I tell them where we are going, how long we are going to take, etc. and remind them to stay within sight of each other so we don’t lose anyone. I remind them that if they spend the whole time talking to each other then all they will have to write down is what they heard each other say. I take my own little paper and make my own list as we go. A 30 to 45 minute walk is enough. On a really nice day I might stretch it out to an hour. They do need time, in whatever setting you have them, to do some writing when they get back. I am always amazed at how well this works. In a mixed group, with some reluctant learners, you will, of course, get a few who don’t write down anything, but most come back with several squares of their paper filled.
Right when we get back I have them circle up and read out their lists. I tell them they can steal from each other as the lists are read. For one thing, the sharing out gives those who didn’t really buy into the activity a second chance, but, I also remind them that no poet should ever be ashamed of recognizing and appropriating a particularly resonate imgage, whether it is in your own shopping cart or someone else’s. The genius of poetry is at least half in knowing what is worth stealing. Again, I don’t know why this works, but most of time my students just love to hear each other’s lists. I might focus in on one particularly vivid impression from each list with an “ah that’s good. I can see how that might work its way into a poem.”
Then I tell them the next step is just to go back to their desks and rewrite their lists. I say, “if you’ve anything like me, you wrote things down while walking and by tomorrow you won’t be able to read what you wrote. Take a few moments while the experience is fresh in your mind to rewrite the list in a form you can read. Unfold your paper, take a nice fresh sheet in your notebook, and copy out your list.” You will have a few, of course, who claim to be able to read what they wrote just fine. I tell them to humor me and write it out fresh in their notebooks anyway. I tell them there is another reason to rewrite the list. “As you copy, be asking yourself, line by line, ‘now how can I make that into a poem? How would that fit? How does that go with everything else I wrote down? What does that make me think of? How did that make me feel? Where can I go with that?’”
“Somewhere in there, in the process of rewriting your list, one or more of those sense impressions or images is going to grab you—it’s going to begin to resonate with your thoughts and feelings—to begin to make connections in your mind. When it does, flip the paper over, or go on to the next page of you notebook, and write it down again. Then follow the connections, zooming in, zooming out like we did for the Is poems, and see where it takes you. When you run out of steam (or if you run out of steam), just go back to copying your list until something else catches your attention—until you find something else that sparks a connection.”
I will take them back to the Inside Out and Outside In theory and ask them what kind of a poem we are trying to write here. “This is getting,” I tell them, “really close to how real poets live and work. A lot of poetry is writen like this, from the outside in. The poet sees or hears or tastes or touches or smells something that seems significant, that resonates with the inner person—or a set of sense impressions come together in the poet’s mind to begin to make a pattern, to open out into unsuspected meaning—and in writing the details down, a poem is born. Some poets actually carry a notebook all the time, their own shopping basket, so they have a place to put the images they pick up, some just develop really retentative memories, but one thing all poets do is to be awake all the time to the sense impressions of the world around them. They are always looking for resonance—always looking for meaningful experience. They are always looking for poems.”
Once again, this whole procedure seems too simple, maybe even a little too arbitrary and artifical, to produce results, but, over and over again, it works. I am always amazed and delighted. Even by the end of 15 to 20 minutes of quiet writing time, several students in the group will have come up with at least the opening lines of a poem. A few will have a complete draft.
Generally, since we shared our raw lists, there isn’t
time to share poems at the end of the session, but I do assign a compete draft
of a poem by the next class.
I used to call this exercise “shopping for poems,” or “the poem walk,” until I overheard one of my students talking in the middle of it:
Shoplifting
We are out for a poem walk,
shopping for images I tell them,
like at WalMart or the Shop-and-Save
with your shopping cart,
filling it with things you might use, up and own isles
in the supermarket of the senses.Jen, the one self-conscious and unashamed poet in the group,
says with a laugh (and I regret not having heard what lead up to it):
“Oh right. Here I am shoplifting images...”And instantly I wonder why,
did she leave her intellectual capital at home?
is she overdrawn at the imagination bank?
did she forget to make the last deposit in her vocabulary account
or to pay the interest on her visionary charge card...or is she just looking for an excuse?
Is she, in fact, a kleptomaniac of poetry—
of image and sound, sense and meaning—
caught in a passion beyond her control?It takes one to know one.
I suppose someday, years and years from now,
I’ll be caught and have to confess,
when I come across her at the great Poets Anonymous meeting in the sky,
(alternate Wednesdays, 7:30, in the celestial basement of the Unitarian Church)
that I stole her line
and used it to make this poem.
So now, of course, I call it “Shoplifting,” and I like that. I like especially the bit about becoming a kleptomaniac of image and sound and sense, because, of course, that is my hope for all my students.