The Summer of My Content: Random Thoughts on Happiness and Creativity

It’s been a while since I have put anything on my blog. That reflects, in part, some recovery from the month of Oulipost as well as the vagaries of the summer cycle of work and play. I have had a large clump of revise-and-resubmit requests on my academic work; and my better half and I have been traveling and just spending more time together. My running is getting more consistent, and I am just all-around busy. But that’s not the only reason the writing has taken a back seat. To be honest, I have gone through patches of far more productive writing when I have been far busier in real life.  And far more stressed.

 The novel is in stasis. The story in my head hasn’t moved forward from where it is, several chapters ahead of where it is on paper. Poems are coming out roughly once every three weeks.

 A friend asked me if I write love poems. The answer is in general no; certainly not poems that anybody would call love poems. I can only speak for myself, but it’s tough to write happy poems that aren’t incredibly embarrassing. I don’t think I am alone here. I recently read a journal that was a collection of poems about parenthood (NOT the surprisingly good fatherhood anthology). What struck me about the poems was how many were just awful. Page after page of what boiled down to “My child is a precious gift”, “I love my child” and/or, at best, “being  a parent is a lot of responsibility.” They were all like having a conversation on the elevator with an excessively friendly stranger. There’s probably something original that could be written on those themes, but I can’t think of what it might be.  So love poems? Not so much. It’s not just that I have been relatively lucky in that department; it’s that I’ve been really blessed and most of my regrets involve things I’ve done, not done to me. Guilt-riddled writing seems even more depressing than love-struck writing.  I don’t do either well, and I suspect most people don’t either. Love poems often seem like things best kept to oneself.

That seems to be true of “happy” poems more generally. When I look back at what I wrote as a teenager, the really embarrassing stuff that wasn’t all just angst plopped onto the page, was all various odes to love. A few were angsty odes to love, which may be worse.

I originally started writing seriously as a way of working through some bad things that had happened. Once I could get past the initial output of self-pity, some of the things that came out were things I could be proud of. Even now, the stuff I write that I feel the best about are all about dealing with some fundamental and ultimately sad and/or disappointing facts of life. Other people can do whimsical or humorous and God bless them, but that is not me. My recent experiences with Oulipost loosened things up a little bit in that direction, but “lighthearted” is a difficult thing to force if it’s not coming. It happens, and I’m glad when it does, but I can’t count on that (and probably shouldn’t).

All of this is a long way of saying things are pretty good these days, and that may not be great for my writing. These things also come in cycles, and I am about to embark on some anxiety producing projects that are likely to bring me back down to my not-so-happy place.  In the meantime, I’m carving out time to write and hoping for something like the best.

A day late, and a dollar. My exit Oulipost interview

In which I revisit the initial Oulipost questions, and put them into the past tense with my own spin.




What was the most exciting part about Oulipost?


It was really fun to play around with different forms and be a little less structured in the content I produced. While being more structured in specific things that needed to be done each day. Given that I only moved to Houston in the last year, obsessively scanning the local paper was a pretty good way to get a feel for my new home.


Now that I have had time to read other people’s work, I am really impressed by what other people did with the prompts and the different ways they responded. Oulipost is completely new to me, and it kind of freed me up. I have been playing around a bit with applying some of the forms to other texts, and it’s really cool, what comes out.

What was the LEAST exciting part of Oulipost?



I am new to this approach, and while I think it was good for me, there were lots of “Crap! What do I do with THIS?” moments. Scary is different than exciting, for me.



Even less exciting was the commitment in terms of time. April was a bad month in terms of free time. I suspect any month would have been just as bad. The only good month to do something is the month you don’t have to.



What did you learn about writing experimental or found poetry?


I wasn’t aware of how many constraints were possible! It was challenging many days, but what was surprising was that the constraints produce far more in the way of creativity than I ever thought. I was really impressed by what other people could do.


The other thing I learned, more generally, is something I probably should have always known, but that it’s easy to forget. You get out what you put in. When I didn’t have much time to work on things, there was never a poem I was really proud of. Inspiration seems to work best in the context of either a lot of excess time, or a lot of hard work, or both.



FPR: What did you learn about source  material?


I did best when I could sit in the coffee shop, pen in hand, and mess around with the actual physical, literal Houston Chronicle. I can understand why the morning paper was such a ritual for so many people for so long, and I do think a lot gets lost in the translation to digital, at least in terms of the sense experience.


I tried to focus on the local sections of the newspaper, or the sections with the most regional inflections, like sports. This felt a little more general. There were some national stories I couldn’t resist, but I was worried that too many of these would make things generic.



FPR: Who is your- ?


I’m still going with Burt Reynolds, or perhaps Sterling Archer.

after addam: agenda

after addam: agenda

story: bear born,

rabbits made hush/

dead/away. happy,

 shit-don’t-stink

 

tomorrow’s agenda:

one happy touch

  

Background:

It appears that I have the found poetry bug, although I also have the “not doing anything productive with creative writing every day” bug. It’s a competition between my better and worse instincts. It’s probably fitting that I used Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam novel as the source for this found poetry exercise. I kept it short and simple.  I decided not to add any additional words.

 

 

Take the closest book to you. Open it to page 56 paragraph 1, line 4 and pick three random words.

 

Then open the book to page 107 paragraph 3 line 2 and pick three random words.

 

Now flip to a random page and find some dialogue. Find one word used to convey what a character is saying. It CANNOT be the word "said".

 

Invert the number of that page (321=123), and find an adjective and a subject

 

Now go to the last page and pick one word from each paragraph, line 3. One of them must be a verb.

 

Now write something with it. A six word story. A poem. Short story. A novel.

 

You have the option of just using those words or adding others with them.

 

BUT, you must use all of the words you found during this exercise in some capacity. It can be the plural or a different tense of the world, but it must have the original root.

 

Share what you wrote with us on our twitter @dzancbooks

 

thirty is the loneliest number

thirty is the loneliest number

 

food is clearly part of the reason, Pam,

cause resentful displeasure (you you know):

f-bomb. Except it’s not my club;

 

mandibles, calm as amylase, self-

cleaning (parents);

 

                              hard as balls,

recyclable, an arid, Nordic

colander: a default couple, near

sense: yolk, considered hoarding.

 

red phase: and she has content, not

skin. Justin Bieber, moon. Perfect,

our normal.

 

                    smudged, your mercy,

not our business. Ursula Le Guin

vaunteth not herself. Australian

mariachi-rap. we’re electronic

               

                   

Note:

The last post of the month, a compliation of the earlier poems. I wasn’t sure what constraint to put on myself here, but I decided to sample my poems for the month in order, picking favorite phrases, words, lines, or punctuation.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Conclude the project by writing a poem that incorporates words and lines from all of your past 29 poems.

huh, Canada Dry

huh, macs

 

the biography here is attempting to criminalize

epitaxy. integrate: we’re electronic, with

a more appropriate vacuum of hundreds of

victims, charges and accounting practices

Houston is approximate to swindling a false

space that described itself as a victim;

question ethical standards for all firm and

inaccurate innovations if the allegations are true

 

Source

Wermund, Benjamin. 2 UH Professors Accused of Scam. Houston Chronicle. 29 Apr. 2014. A1, A11B3.

 

Note:

The goal was to produce an oulipost that looked like an oulipost, but wasn’t. Fortunately, this article had a lot of great words I scrambled around at random. I am still not 100% clear on what epitaxy is, but I’m glad it exists.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

The name of this procedure is taken from the soft drink marketed as “the champagne of ginger ales.” The drink may have bubbles, but it isn’t champagne. In the words of Paul Fournel, who coined the term, a Canada Dry text “has the taste and color of a restriction but does not follow a restriction.” (A musical example is Andrew Bird’s “Fake Palindromes.”)  Be creative, and write a poem sourced from your newspaper that sounds like it’s been Oulipo-ed, but hasn’t.

a melting snowball oulipost

 

any given

 

entertainment,

(thanksgiving):

mariachi-rap,

Australian

variation/

everyday.

winning

asleep

wheel

will

sun

da

y

 

Source

Horswell, Cindy. Festival Gets Off to a ‘Good’ Start. Houston Chronicle. 28 Apr. 2014. B1, B3.

 

Note:

This may or may not be cheating, but I was really happy with the result. Not just because it looks like an ice-cream cone. The photo in the original article drew me in, and the progression turned out to be a really nice mélange.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Melting Snowball: A text in which each word has one letter less than the preceding one, and the last word only one letter. From your newspaper, select a starting word, and then continue adding words of decreasing length from the same source article or passage. Challenge yourself further by only using words in order as you encounter them in the text.

rational lapdance: a sonnet

rational dance: a sonnet

 

birthday has been charged with a felony

according to the documents she

refutes in a substantive way

 

she vaunteth not herself

 

you baby happy birthday

long and is kind charity

property but only temporarily

drugs though prison officials say

 

the rich are actually doing well

 

and the other students yelled

it’s difficult to hire and retain guards

mere mention of unequal

hoarding disorder like this fall

dance according to court records

  

Source

Lezon, Dale. Lap Dance Lands Teacher in Hot Seats. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B3

 

Editorial. Feeling the Heat. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B6

 

Bible Verse. 1 Corinthians 13:4. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B6

 

Krugman, Paul. Economist Exposes U.S. Myth of Meritocracy. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B7

 

Szymanski, Jeff, Frost, Randy, & Steketee, Anti-Hoarding Ordinance Stigmatizes Mentally Ill. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B7

 

Note:

I limited myself to the B section of the newspaper, as that’s where all the fun is, and when I am on a limited time budget, it’s the best place to find stuff. I like how it came together. I did some minor jiggering to make it fit (tenses, genders, and the like).  

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Create a 14-line sonnet sourced from lines from your newspaper that is divided according to the first five digits of the irrational number pi – that is, into stanzas of 3, 1, 4, 1 and 5 lines. As with the preceding sonnet assignment (see April 14) you may interpret “sonnet” as formally or as loosely as you wish.