Thursday, April 1, 2010

poetry, daily: 1

What is a writing exercise?

A writing exercise is a suggestion from outside the writer for a direction, image, form, or prompt for writing. It is not rule-bound. It is not prescriptive. In the best of times, the writing exercise may be best served by the writer's ignorance of it, transgression of its boundaries, or contradiction of its instructions.

What is a writing exercise for?

A writing exercise is not only to train the writer to respond in the moment to a particular stimulus which interrupts and then disappears from or is integrated into the flow of the unnoticed daily, but to train the writer to see the processes, projects, anticipations, exaggerations, possibilities, disappointments, and travels of everyday life as a continual source of that sort of stimulation; to transform the parts of life which we regularly overlook into instances of the surreal, the poignant, the bizarre, the beautiful. In short, the writing exercise exists to train the writer in attentiveness to the moment and openness to all the linguistic, imagistic, and relational possibilities inherent in it.

daybook/commonplacebook

See you tomorrow.

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All work here © 2010 and onward to me, Eireann Lorsung. Please do not reproduce my words in any form in print or online. If you wish to excerpt parts from the month of poetry featured here, please contact me: ohbara at gmail dot com.

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