How To Throw

By Erin Robertson

How to Throw

(response to Susan Howe's "Thorow")

Thorow the process of learning
Thoreau, the philosophy, learning of

the nearness of poetry

transcendence, geobiology
one of man, one of nature

nature in us as nature

men have words,
whose voices inhabit poems

literature of savigism

men have titles,
jentelmen

the origin of property

men have manipulations,
wars, besieges, laws

elegiac western imagination

how much can man control nature
a name's a name's a name

'where is the path'

the silence of nature
ise and wete and snow make no human noise

we go through the word Forest

_________________________

made this by combining two separate poems, which i guess, in the act itself, is another “statement” on poetry:

statement on poetry.

mountains and mountains
and mountains of molehills,
the equipment is broken
so i'm panicking, panicking.
the looseleaf topography i've created
keeps me in the valleys of self gratification
my self loathing would be strong
because my inability to hold my inhibitions

but words overflowing my mind
spill out to wash my soul
they wash the sin away
to sweeten the scent of grime
urge the dirt from my bones
pulled through the skin
evaporating in the frozen wonder
frigid atmosphere in my heart
residue from nights i hoped to forget

_________________________

About Erin: My name is Erin Robertson and I will soon be a sophomore at Temple University studying Psychology and Italian. My experiences, the people I love, and the life I choose to live, give me plenty of inspiration for the various creative outlets I pursue. I enjoy molding and sculpting words with my poetry as a form of expression.

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, April 21th, 2011

-related to posts: Does Poetry Matter?, and Erin’s first poetry piece on red Ravine which includes four poems, one about her relationship to her grandfather with Alzheimers — Fourteen Dozen Roses: The World As The Jungle It Is

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da•da poetry

I

seagulls and the smell of fish

the earth smolders and smokes

there is a fine line between solitude and loneliness

I like to walk that line


pink syrup flowing over rock

the wheat field consumed the trees

sandwich of bodies

II

nothing’s stable, everything shifts


I fly through the clouds

down below a brown landscape

where am I going?


helpless helpless helpless


i see wild stallions galloping

mountains can look like horses, can’t they

I climbed all this way and now cannot find the valley


tree figures run away


froth on chocolate milk

shadows of Stonehenge fall across the snow

III

pieces of cloud fall from sky

I think of traveling, being places where I don’t come from

soft edges on formerly rugged rock

salty lips, the waves pushing me back to the shore

IV

in my memory I see the waves

the colors pink and blue, like a gentle sunset in summer


black rock on a craggy coast

the sea rushed over the village


I think of strangers, and how much I am like them

there were children crying and colors flying

V

my slopes are cooling down

land melting thinning, what’s beyond

I think of the ocean, which I love and fear both

where the clouds meet the land


setting sunlight captured in liquid love


my edges are hotter than my center

papers fall from Heaven unnoticed

I see nothing for miles, I feel empty inside

some days I go back to the beach


I am flying apart







____________________________________________________________________________________


These poems came out of an exercise suggested by red Ravine guest writer Judith Ford, and modified from an event she attended and describes in the post lang•widge. Guests at that event, which was held this past March in Bethesda, Maryland, was an “evening of art, jazz and spontaneous poetry, featuring paintings by Freya Grand.”

Freya Grand’s paintings, pictured above, became the inspiration for our own red Ravine “blog happening,” created and curated by Jude:

So here’s an idea: How about trying a little mini da-da poetry writing sans Steven Rogers’ music? Take a look at any of the Freya Grand paintings in this post (or visit her website). Pick out a piece of music you currently like a lot. While the music plays, quickly, without much thought, jot down five (or so) lines or phrases…. Let’s see what we come up with.

Jude received free form lines and phrases from three participants (including myself). She printed them, cut them apart, and scrambled them. Then, she used playing cards to generate the poem, picking a card, choosing that number of lines, then picking randomly from the bunch. Jude took the liberty of creating stanzas as she typed the results. She did a beautiful job.

Thank you, Jude, for sharing this creative fun with us!

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lang•widge

By Judith Ford
 
 

You’re Invited, lang•widge, March 27, 2010, Gallery Neptune in Bethesda, Maryland.

Poetry is a lot like music. Music evokes visual images; visual art can stimulate poems. Read that backwards and it’s true that way, too.

Last March, while visiting a friend in DC, I had the opportunity to experience all three — music, my friend’s paintings, and a spontaneous poetry happening — mixed together for one entertaining evening. The event: lang•widge. The setting: Gallery Neptune in Bethesda, Maryland.

My friend, artist Freya Grand, paints landscapes. Not your ordinary landscapes. Landscapes filtered through Freya’s vision and open to interaction with the viewer. In Freya’s words, “Painting landscape begins as an internal process. As in abstraction, forms transmit a mysterious secret life, exert a presence.”

Presence was abundant on March 27 at Gallery Neptune, even before the rest of the evening’s events unfolded.  I’ve always had my own strong responses to Freya’s work, partly because I’ve traveled with her to some of the locations she later painted. More because her work is emotional, full of motion and light. Like me, the lang•widge participants responded in their own unique ways.

So here’s how it went: A few weeks before lang•widge, Freya and gallery owner Elyse Harrison asked jazz musician Steven Rogers to preview the paintings and compose short pieces of music in response. Once everyone had had a chance to walk around and see all the paintings (munch on cheese and crackers, drink wine), we were asked to gather in front of a podium and listen to a short poetry reading by Charlie Jensen, poet and director of The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, and the poet, Reb Livingston.








            



                            



                                       


Works by Freya Grand, Rock at Low Tide, 48″ x 60″, 2008, Burning Fields, 30″ x 30″, 2009, Cotopaxi, 48″ x 60″, 2006, and Fog, Benbulben, 30″ x30″, 2010, paintings © 2006-2010 by Freya Grand. All rights reserved.




Suitably warmed-up, we were each given a clipboard, a few sheets of paper, and a pencil. As Steven Rogers’ techno-jazz music played, we looked at the paintings again and quickly jotted down short lines. Whatever came to mind.

I was surprised by how much I liked the music. I am not a big jazz fan, but looking at Freya’s work and listening to this weird contemporary music, I found myself enjoying the way the visual and musical bits blended together. Whatever it was I wrote in response — I didn’t preserve any of it —  was full of the light and movement I’ve always seen in my friend’s work.  Hope, change, powerful natural forces, awe, wonder. 

When the four short pieces of music had finished, we reassembled in front of the podium. Volunteers did most of the reading, but first Charlie Jensen and Reb Livingston demonstrated the technique. They chose two from a diverse collection of colored dice. The number rolled determined the number of pieces of paper to be read together to create a spontaneous poem.

The results were surprising, to say the least. Where I had seen light and life, others had seen darkness and death, despair and violence. Sexuality. New life forms. Being lost, being found. Memories of blankets, clouds, and chaos.

 
 

During lang•widge, poets Charles Jensen and Reb Livingston explain the process, draw poem pieces, then read the resulting poetry, photos © 2010 by Judith Ford. All rights reserved.



Here are some of my favorite lines:

smiley in foam, red glee

his daughter in a box, pushed out to sea

I’ve made a mistake coming here

I’ll never eat butter cream frosting again

When my husband, Chris, who loves to perform for an audience, volunteered, things got even stranger. He happened to pick a very long series of lines that were written in five different languages. Chris speaks nothing but English. His courageous attempts to pronounce Spanish, Italian, French, German, and, I think, Swedish, were sidesplitting.

Afterward Chris sought out the writer of those lines, and, yes, she did speak all those languages. She told Chris he’d done a pretty good job at guessing the pronunciations.

I sought out Freya. “Did you realize how much pain and despair was hiding in your paintings?” I asked. Freya is not prone to darkness or despair. She told me she was actually more surprised by the butter cream frosting than the pain. She said something like, “People project into my work whatever is up for them at the present moment.”

Not sure about that butter cream.

Freya Grand and Chris Ford, photo ©
2010 by Judith Ford. All rights reserved.

So here’s an idea:  How about trying a little mini da-da poetry writing sans Steven Rogers’ music? Take a look at any of the Freya Grand paintings in this post (or visit her website). Pick out a piece of music you currently like a lot. While the music plays, quickly, without much thought, jot down five (or so) lines or phrases.

Email them to me at pinkeggs@gmail.com.  After two weeks or so (about August 9) I’ll randomly pick out lines, type them in the order I’ve picked, and post them here in the comments section. Let’s see what we come up with.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are two poems created during the lang•widge event; these are also posted on The Writer’s Center website.

1.

this is reversal

clouds coming up through earth’s crust

all my orange drizzles around in dust

I fly over this, I needn’t touch down

Earth is melting

manna comes down

my wings are lifted by

heat from the ground

Lift off!

Earth Burnt and Fractured

Evaporated Anger

Unexpressed Blindness

earth’s breath

greeny pastures of ooze

trudging uphill I see my shadow and a whale

I’m near a synthetic ocean

one that’s flat and even dry

cured epoxy cement

fake lily sky

but here’s where I swim

and here’s where I’ll die

your piano carries me anywhere

you play

standing stones

scottish shore

volcanic mist

walk to the top edge

as above, so below

coolness rising

You and me

never the same

mountain ranges between us

ocean depths……storms

air that we breathe

the only media

that unites

I lived there so long the ocean was like a person to me.

A giant meatball rolling towards its destiny.

2.

East coast sunsets

are less brilliant

but the sand between my toes

feels more like home.

Scary golf course littered laced

and smoking with traps sandy

silken tofu nowhere is there a

flag or a hole to crawl into

Dark fog charcoal wall

surrounding me give me grass

but it wriggles this grass

maybe the rocks will protect me

marshmallow antlers and steamy pea soup

There’s a smiley

in the foam

red glee

misty canyon aerie wheat

volcanic atmosphere rock strewn beach

geyser rivulets

yves tanguy

shadows

cliff hanger

steam

heat

his daughter in a box, pushed out to sea

wash of creation

thrum

pure thin air

Moses parts a red and vanillas sea

A single, persistent surfer.

I’d made a mistake coming here.

bleed





___________________________________________________________________________________________

Judith Ford is a psychotherapist and writer who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was red Ravine’s very first guest writer, with her 25 Reasons I Write post. Judith’s other pieces on red Ravine include Mystery E.R., I Write Because, and PRACTICE – Door – 20min.

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