I suppose now is the time for me to 'fess up – I am not a poet. That is, poetry is not usually the way I choose to express myself. I love reading the works of Rumi, Rilke, ee cummings, but as a rule, I avoid writing poetry at all cost.
Lately, I’ve been bending this rule – experimenting with poetic prose and even a little free verse. And yesterday I just about snapped the rule in half with some mixed-media poetry.
I started with this:
From there, I selected certain words from the passage, connected them in a poem-like way, used the sharpie to cover all the other words, and ended with this:
From the words of Jane Eyre, I created my own original poem - by coloring (what I imagine to be ink blots) over the extraneous words. My amateur artistic skills aside, I enjoyed this project SO much. For all you writers/poets out there, this project is a lovely break-away from the usual pen-notebook routine.
The poem itself turned out decently. It reads:
the room was remote
so seldom entered
on the mirrors
quiet dust
a room
lonely in its grandeur
this chamber was that of
vacant majesty
I love this exercise. The point isn’t so much perfection or profundity, but instead simply finding beauty in another piece of art – then re-creating it to make it your own.
Try it for yourselves! The only supplies needed are sharpies, a torn-out (or typed up) page of any old book, and lots imagination.
X-Aleah
