Week 3 - Word Games?

Acrostic matrix poem.

The Little Green Man

Top-House, Eaves,

Leg I Tape Tied Locks Exam,

Grip Radio (Electric), Etched North.

Man Are Never

Them. Hello! Er…

Leave. I There Turned Looking; End.

Glasses Rest Excuses, Else Nothing

More Apprenticeship. Nappy

Touched - Head End,

Linesman In Three, Tracksuit; Late English.

Grandstand Red, Except Everyone Needed

Meant About Next

I found this exercise quite strange. The process seems very mechanical and requires next-to no real input from me. I found that adding punctuation in places actually added some poetic resonance to the rather arbitrary combinations of words. One surprising and simultaneously vexing quality of using a novel for the process is that words that share a context and meaning can work well together, for example the third “stanza” has the majority of its words taken from an extended few paragraphs about football, and as such work well together. The vexation comes in the fact that once two or more words come up that work well together, it is easy to desire a third or fourth word that will complete some sort of meaning. It is not unnatural to desire coherence. For example, “Grandstand Red, Except Everyone…” could have ended in a much better “N” word than “Needed” and some sort of meaning could have been gained.

It’s certainly an interesting experiment to try, I’ve found myself placing meaning and importance on particular couples or groups of words (hence the punctuation), and there does seem to be some poetics in the composition.

2.

Westminster Bridge is a road to show more fair:

Westminster, Middlesex Bank, soul who could pass by

London, England. For over 600 years in its majesty:

Kingston. Proposals for a bridge, like a garment, wear,

Were opposed by the Corporation, morning; silent, bare,

Opposition in 1722 and after a theatre, and temples lie,

Received parliamentary approval, and to the sky;

Westminster Bridge, designed in the smokeless air.

1739-1750; beautifully steep.

The City of London responded; valley, rock, or hill:

London Bridge and widening it felt calm, so deep!

Blackfriars Bridge which opens his own sweet will:

Bridge (1759), Battersea Bridge; houses seem asleep.