Poetry: If Gibson can do it, so can I. Maybe.

I am taking a poetry class.

Yes, you read that correctly. I need another elective for my terminal degree and one of my only real options was Nature Writing. That subject matter is difficult enough for me, given that I am not at all woodsy (activities such as camping and canoeing must occupy certain circles of Dante's Inferno), but its even more problematic than that.

Unbeknownst to me when I registered, a key component of the class is the reading and writing of poetry...something I have never attempted to write.

Daunting to say the least. Aside from the epic narratives of the canon, a few literary poems (THE RAVEN!), and of course song lyrics, I've never been attracted to poems. I've certainly never felt a calling to write them. My mind has opened somewhat upon learning that one of my favorite writers, William Gibson, published a poem in 1992.

How the blazes did I not know this?

Called Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), it is a 300-line poem about nostalgia, memory, consciousness, and how viewing the past is always framed by the present and not the reality of that bygone time.

Of course with it being Gibson, there had to be a connection to technology. The poem came on a 3.5 floppy disk (it was 1992, after all) and after the user opened the file and read it, it would encrypt itself. Gone.

Ephemeral, get it?

I wonder if I could do something similar for class? It could be a mixed-media presentation, where I present a few lines about...I don't know...nuts, twigs, and berries, and piece by piece the words are overwritten with others such as "bandwidth," "assimilation," "upload," "chrome polymer," and "singularity." I'd need to find a coder to pull it off.

A bit much, I think.

The class has actually been good. If the brain is allowed to be flexible, one finds that "nature" encompasses a wide variety of interesting topics for writing.The readings are compelling and my fellow students have been great partners for banter.

As for poetry...guess I might not be too terrible at it.



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