Monday, April 2, 2012
Whitman Blackout
So to further elaborate upon my desire to explore Specimen Days, I must clarify what it is I actually propose to do. As I have previously stated in some of my earlier blogs, the key to understanding the essence of Walt most likely lies within his ‘journal’ for lack of a better way to describe it, which is why I intend to understand the entries to the best of my ability. Anyway to get to the point, I think it would be interesting to create a blackout poem from two of Whitman’s writings. For instance I will take “A Cavalry Camp” and “Some Sad Cases Yet” and from each of these I will black out certain sentences and/or words in order to create a new poem using Whitman’s words. Essentially I will be recycling certain phrases or compelling words from his entries in an attempt to find new meanings within them. In doing this I may be able to subliminally pick out key terms that otherwise would have been left die amongst the countless meanings and terms found within each entry. Thus, I am hoping to extract the essence of these two writings in order to shine a new and hopefully more progressive light upon the inner workings of Whitman.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ooh, cool :) Specimen Days seems like the perfect work to use for this exercise. There are some really gorgeous phrases in there. Are you gonna post the blackout poem on your blog after you're done?
ReplyDeleteExactly! I feel like Specimen Days has the poetic quality necessary for me to create a black out poem of adequate substance, and I will indeed be posting it on here whenever I finish!
ReplyDeleteMeghan this is a pretty cool idea, I don't think i grasped it fully when you mentioned it to me last week. Anyway, the process of making a poem like this is basically synthesizing Whitman with your perspective and arranging it in your own way to make your own meaning. At the same time that i think this is very individually creative, I also think it is a rad idea considering just what you brought up, that Whitman's autobiographical specimen days have a certain poetical quality that washes over the reader as if it wasn't an autobiographical kind of entry.
ReplyDeleteAre you going to try and form a theme within the black out poem? Like centralize around one of Whitman's themes? or sort of form your own based on what you have learned of Whitman this semester? Idk, that might help show the Man what you have absorbed from Whitman.
Neeato. By concentrating on certain phrases of his specimen days entries you can maybe better grasp them. Also how cool would it be were you to find some parallel phrases between "leaves" and the journal? I am sure there have to be some. Cool idea dude.
ReplyDeleteMax: I think the coolest part of "Blackout Poetry" is that you are almost forced to begin with no central theme in mind, and only through the development of the poem may some sort of connective element emerge. But when it comes to Walt and in my feeble attempt to appease "the Man" I am choosing two entries that deal with Walt's experience with war and death, and from these hopefully I'll be able to create something of legitimate substance !
ReplyDeleteJason: That's exactly what I'm hoping for!
Sounds very surrealistic . . . exquisite corpse style . . . and very interesting. Might also be helpful after blacking-out to write up a commentary on how you did it and what you've discovered . . .
ReplyDelete