Exquisite corpse fans will know that the poetry feature has moved from being a my blog thang to being a Space and Time magazine thang.
He’s still the same corpse we have come to know and love, he’s just growing up and making more friends. So, time to play games with him again!
New call to participate in July’s Exquisite Corpse. In case you don’t know (you wouldn’t be alone…), an exquisite corpse is a collaborative poem made up of lines submitted by different people with no knowledge of what anyone else has submitted. We all submit a line blind. Even I try not to look at the submitted lines until after I’ve written my own line. You can read more about them here.
At the end of the submission period the poem is put together. This is where the tricky magic comes in. Some months the lines go together so well I’d swear all the contributors were psychically linked. Other months are less cohesive and I really have to work at fitting it together.
In the end, I pop the poem onto an image and it gets posted online for the world to admire. I also send the image with poem to everyone who contributed. Everyone is credited in order of their line.
NEW: This time, there is a theme: revolution. Try not to use the actual word, just have it in there somehow. Be creative and have fun!
You can see last month’s poem at Exquisite Corpse | Space and Time Magazine. If you ever lose him and his link, just look under the Table of Contents link on the Space and Time magazine home page.
Exquisite Corpses from the past:
Exquisite Corpse #1: Collaborative Poem
Exquisite Corpse #2: The Daunting Riddle
Exquisite Corpse #3: ‘Toxicated
Exquisite Corpse #4: Deceptions
Exquisite Corpse #5: Final Chimes
Exquisite Corpse #6: Treading
Exquisite Corpse #7: The Reckoning
Exquisite Corpse #8: The Last Kiss
I am a player and the game is fluid. Wordsmiths from all over the globe converge monthly and strain and pour the liquid into a form called “Exquisite Corpse.” Designed to be a collaborative free-form poem, the participants are not privy to any contribution. It is the sadistic pleasure of the woman publishing the submissions to mold the random lines into a cohesive story. Sometimes she presents a backstory as to it’s final state. Other times, the reader bumps along the skeletal remains in an effort to
decipher its beauty.
I know this woman and she is a cruel mistress. She is my teacher. I am drawn to her like a whispered last confession – coerced from unspeakable cruelty.
Prompts cut savagely into my skin. I am not in favor of this method of torture. I barely survived a short semester of her writer’s incarceration. This month, however, I find new life in her choice – “Revolution”.
The fight has always existed. It was timing that posed the biggest challenge. I was subdued by fate. Overpowered by ignorant parents in their seemingly perfect academic life, my clay essence was thrown to a potter’s wheel; formed, glazed and fired into THIS! There I was on display with the other non living adornments which existed in their life. I matched the decor of my girlhood bedroom so well, no one saw me. I matched the walnut ebony piano and B flat clarinet -performances fell on deaf ears. I matched my Grandma’s pink petunias and was invisible from the sticky dead blossoms which I dead-headed every day of summer. I matched the ski slopes and bicycles, roller skates and doll houses. My church choir robe faded indiscriminately and seamlessly into the mass of
pimpled and odd shaped teens. Nothing was mine. I was nothing – but show and tell.
But the need to mutiny has been reignited. My weapon is vocabulary. I have honed it to a convincingly fine edge; wielding the blade – I am a scythe. Pointing the blade – I exist as a spear. Cutting with the blade gives me momentary advantage and the element of surprise. Sometimes I just caress it and trace it along the delicate blue veins of my wrist when the words lie hidden.
The battle replays and sustains me..
Bravissimo! Well and beautifully said!