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Writing poetry is mostly a solitary endeavor. But while composition happens in solitude and quiet, that doesn’t mean that a poet can’t be part of a larger community of writers. And sometimes poetry can even be collaborative. When my friend
wrote about Lily Tobias’ Fragments project I was intrigued.I’ve never experimented with found-poetry or with the cento form, where you write, or rather stitch together, a poem using someone else’s words. But I’ve made quite a few patchwork quilts before. And the idea of a group of poets all looking at the same collection of phrases and each making something of them, something different…. that’s kind of fascinating.
The rules for Fragments were strict: you have to use the whole fragment, you can’t break them up, no mixing and recombining. I found these restrictions quite frustrating at times. I wanted to break them apart, mine them for words or shorter phrases. But I stuck to the assignment, allowing the constraints to be a challenge.
As I sorted through the small strips of paper, some of them started to call to me. I put all of the ones that felt meaningful into a pile and started arranging them. Eventually the formed themselves into something that felt satisfying and yet not completely my own. There was a strange feeling of paradoxical ownership and alienation. The final form of my poem was much longer than the piece I eventually submitted. Because the first stanza was perfection, and the rest of it felt like it followed, but didn’t quite work for no reason I couldn’t put my finger on. But in the end I decided that as a whole it didn’t have the punch that the first stanza by itself has. And I like short poems. So I decided to leave it at that. To me it feels like a writing credo, a reminder that writing starts with a fragile web of words that nonetheless have a mysterious kind of weight in the mind, the delightful paradox of sounds that have not yet been uttered by lips
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It’s a little strange reading all the other poems in this collection and seeing what other people have made of fragments I held in my hands, cherished, and either used or discarded. Pieces I took into myself and made my own. They have a slipperiness, like trying to hold onto eels, delightfully slithering away into the deep. Seeing my lines in other people’s poems, it’s quite a new experience. Thank so much to Lily Tobias for letting me be a part of this project.
See all the other poems here:
Your poem is one of my favorites.