Experimental Writing

I. Talk Poem:

 

Talk the Talk

          I think what I’m going to speak about today is graham crackers. I know it might sound like an unusual topic to begin with, but maybe that’s the point. So many people forget about graham crackers. You know, we’re so tempted by the family-size puffed up bags of Sour Cream & Onion potato chips, and the like twelve varieties of Oreo’s—yes, the double stuffed—that we forget about some of the classic snack options. Like graham crackers. An oldie, for sure, but a definite goodie. Don’t feel guilty if you’re one of the people who forgot about this simple, but delicious treat. I had forgotten about them too, until the other day when I saw my friend Natalie practically diving into a box face first on our front porch. The blue cardboard box—Honey Maid over Nabisco, of course. It’s funny, these golden squares were such a staple of my childhood diet, and yet I had basically neglected them for years. To me, graham crackers will always go hand in hand with brown paper bag lunches. And with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crust cutoff, divided into two isosceles triangles and sealed in a clear Ziploc baggy. And with mini Poland Spring water bottles and pencil cases and blue Paper Mate pens. With campfires and Snoopy Village and the globs of marshmallow and melted chocolate that coated our roasting sticks and the corners of our sticky smiles. I remember breaking each individual graham into four identical squares and building edible towers. You know, stacking them up almost like Jenga blocks, one on top of the other. Like cardboard, wooden slats. I would compete against my brother to see whose would topple on the kitchen table first. My mom always told me when I lost that I was the lucky one, because I could eat my building once it fell, while my brother had to stand guard at his building on the other side. So many of my childhood kitchen snacks were graham cracker-based. They were the crumbly topping to my yogurt parfaits, the bottom layer of my Nutella and Fluff Stack-ups. My father was always eating them in our kitchen. First, at the head of the wooden table. Then, after we remodeled our house, at the far right seat of the island—the one closest to the television, with Sports Center always on in the background. The crumbs would line the indented borders of our paper plates. They’d fill the ridges with what looked like small brown sand grains. Like we had gone to the beach and shaken our towels out on our placemats, or something like that. Maybe like our placemats were our towels, even. My parents used to always yell at me for not eating over the table, and my crumbs would line the cracks between the tiles on our kitchen floor. All sprinkled across in between. Casey, my dog, would lick each one, licking up a lot of mothballs too, I’m sure, as they stuck to his pale pink tongue.

          I went home this past break and noticed that we still had three boxes of graham crackers left in my basement, and two in my kitchen cabinet. One was open. I don’t know who ate them last, and I felt like too much of an intruder to take one. Like even more of an intruder opening up a new box. I grabbed a bag of cookies instead.

          I don’t know why I ever stopped eating graham crackers. It wasn’t something I did consciously; I just shifted to other food aisles and new snacks as I matured. I feel a little bit guilty though, to be honest. And also little bit embarrassed that I feel guilty in the first place. I didn’t mean to forget. And seeing Natalie munching on them on our porch yesterday reminded me of my kitchen and childhood and the beach. And my soccer ball towel, and ESPN playing in the background of all my weekend brunches and late night snacks. I missed the blue cardboard box. And I missed home.

 

 

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II. Overheard Conversation:

 

 

Say What?

Who was the other guy on the roof last night? I heard you can make your own core. My brother still hasn’t asked anyone to prom, I’m getting a little worried. But you have a boyfriend. He could be a potential formal date if Max can’t come and Jack is busy, and if Henry has his final on Tuesday. There’s birthday cake inside of the cracker snaps. An iota of ink spots. They can’t move schmear it! Seven or eight bucks depending on how hungry I am. Ugh fuck being a carnivore. while we were getting our nails done. Safanza’s the best. WATCH IT. He’s cheesing hard. I can’teven afford to live in a box in Chinatown. We’ll figure something out. Do you want your toes done? On the side near the salami. Where were his hands? I’m all you need though. To chouse! Thingy majig a might. Might I, though? Is she? Is he? Were they? Three blocks away. That bar nobody gets into unless you’re a friend of his mother’s uncle. On her two private planes. He knows his Natalie. Its too hot for my iphone to function—even my apps are sweating. I’m relevant on campus at least. A smorgasbord of people; you know—both zete and apes. I could give two flying fucks. Okay but why is no one else in their costumes, Meredith? Can we try and be sceney for five minutes? I’ve been backstalking for 3 hours, help. He’s more ginger than you are. I just really want a Hermes Birkin bag; I like how they’re subtle. But who is Allegro really? Yep, how are you? She like actually got behind the counter though. 299 followers, follow me betches. Don’t worry, the new liquor store definitely sells kosher wine. Girls are kinda like mcnuggets. She’s basically playing how to lose a guy in 10 days right now. The vagina dialogues. It’s worse than Feb Club. I’ve spent like six hours total with this kid and we spent most of it making out… why does he think he knows me? No appointments until Wednesday next month. Sex is like pizza. It was all about alien birth. I’m born on Star Wars Day. But like everyone wears it. I can’t have another black shirt. One hangover special please. Orange is my color. It’s like red, except, not like red. Everything has quinoa in it now. I ooze soap. Siri, where’s Oz? Is it socially acceptable if we uber three blocks and don’t tell? Gluten, you’ve won this duel for now. She’s the queen of jewography. It’s Trader Joe’s so it’s healthy. He’s like a hot dad though. They burnt my nose and I’m still what they call a gusher. Just confess you quit the Shabbatones! Lemon Yellow Pea.The fuzzy ones with the crinkled lips? Whiskey’s not clear. He thinks I’m a klepto though. You were scary when you woke up from your nap. You're making me Pop-tarts.  Squish it bagooza! How do you get tapped? You can’t sit with us! Swell me up and fill him too. Recycling can wait until after my bio midterm. I hate when guys wear jorts. No miso-lemon sauce, please. That test raped me up the asshole. Where is Jimmy with my Johns though? An eclectic array of capitalistic structures coexist even today! Pull the cart out of the center aisle, miss. That will be $5.25. Would you like to sign up for our rewards program? Pour some Aunt Jemima up in this house. We need to erase that drawing before your parents come. Did she wink when she said it? Attention whore. Girls don’t send that emoji if they don’t want it. The mean one's there. She went to mash it but the goose stepped in first. Take your seat. We call her the MILF. Just swiffer it. She's twenty seven but looks like twelve. But if we cut them up its like having less, right? Wow we're disgusting. This is like a furniture store, though.  I only had three hits. You're very set on this roof thing. Obviously take her to the dungeon planet of lava doom. Yoga pants and dinosaurs is prime.  I peaked in fifth grade; it's been all downhill since then.

 

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Attention:

 

wouldnt have eaten it anyway.

               It's like                           a country club but I can't wear white jeans.

Lizzy you're good with this stuff.

Yeah everyone in my town lives on the beach and we always go to the club.

                          What'd Jeff say, though?

                 he's just a boy                      no I don't trust               anyway but I know.

  you look yet?

where?

I can't find it.

right there. lock.

                                  yeah. yeah, I know. Let me call after.

why won't it swipe?

                     I'm telling you!

        he said it to her after they got back but I don't

I still can't find it.

 

 

 

 

my favorite

                is Aimee leaving for the full month?

screen             did you see Wasserman?

      but you were with your mom so its not like I ditched you.

My mom wouldn't let me shop for anything but what we were supposed to shop for.

We didn't even go shopping

                     no its the green ones.

          okay but like why is no one going to this?

Mine like flipped out on me because she didn't think I'd find pants to matcg if I just bought the blazer. I was like Mom, its a black blazer.

Where'd you even go?

Ann Taylor.

I hate workpants

            only wear           skirts

did you get the peppers?

                                          ones going I swear. look!

she only gave me mushrooms.

                    mean I know. He didn't even try.

Nicole's the best in that apartment.

                    lollll to that.

Oh Bredelman you slay me.

                  ass the ketchup. Margs!

 

 

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Commentary:

         All of my poems this week are based on spoken, rather than written, words. In my first piece, I used a technique similar to David Antin’s method in his “Talk Poems.” I recorded myself talking about a topic, and then transcribed what I had said. I did not write out the piece before. My only preparation was selecting the topic I would speak about. I had a basic idea of what I wanted to say, but ended up rambling at times in order to keep the monologue going. I thus ended up talking about the crumbs of the graham crackers and the beach; two topics I hadn’t planned on mentioning beforehand at all. In this way, I found this exercise a bit like the Auto Pilot exercise we did earlier. I ended up subconsciously speaking of random things in order to fill the silences, and ended up at a completely different place than I intended.

         One thing I struggled a bit over was transcribing my piece. I was originally going to separate the words by different amounts of space in order to create a tempo similar to the pace I read at. However, I like the way the piece looked aesthetically when it was grouped into large paragraphs; I felt this structure portrayed my tendency to ramble and my somewhat inconsistent thought patterns. It was also somewhat difficult to transcribe what I had said into coherent sentences at times. For example, I often continued my thoughts with the word “and,” but I did not feel these phrases should always be grouped into one sentence, since I normally paused between each phrase when I said them out loud. I therefore tried to break up sentences based upon where and when I paused during the monologue, and kept sentences in tact if I didn’t stop to take a breath.

          In my second piece, I wrote down snippets of conversation I had heard throughout the week. Like I did with my poem for Bruce Andrews’ visit, I recorded each phrase as I heard it on a piece of paper. However, this time, I didn’t recombine parts of each of the phrases, and transcribed them exactly as I heard them. My poem is similar to Kenneth Goldsmith’s Soliloquy in that we both use overheard pieces of conversation, but our poems differ in form. One thing I really admire about Goldsmith’s poem is that you can read the lines in whatever order you wish by switching the numbers and days you click on the screen. I could not figure out a way to do this on my website, so I rearranged the overheard lines in the order of my choosing. I also chose to display all of the overheard lines together on one page, rather than individually like Goldsmith. Presenting the lines together helped me portray the fact that all of these conversations could be going on at once, and could be overheard by many different people. I enjoy the sense of chaos and possibility this form provides.

       I think my third piece was my least successful this week.  Originally, I had sat in my sorority house's kitchen for an hour and recorded everything around me.  I didn't have my computer with me and did the exercise by hand, and accidently lost three of the four sheets of paper.  I transcribed the remaining bits I had left.  I only transcribed the conversations I overheard, but these bits of speech were often overshadowed by other background noises.  For example, the fridge was constantly humming and our chef made a lot of noise when she was cleaning the metal trays.  I think it would be interesting to incorporate these sounds into my piece as well in the future, especially if I expand upon this piece by recording sounds for the full hour.

          All of these exercises really caused me to think of the relation between speaking and writing. In the first piece, I realized how much more focused I am when I have time to think and process what I will say before hand, and when I don’t feel the pressure to keep speaking for an extended period of time. In the second piece, I realized how silly some of the things we say sound when they are pulled out of context and placed on paper. I think the phrases seem more awkward, disjointed, and raw when pulled from their sources and rearranged in my poem. I particularly enjoy how some of the lines actually seem quite ridiculous, especially when juxtaposed with more serious and common phrases.