by Matthew Zapruder
Directors’ Note: This week’s Read Write Prompt is based on Matthew Zapruder’s poem, “The Elegant Trogon.”
Matthew Zapruder's 'Mechanical' Prompt
I have certain nearly religious beliefs about language.
The Elegant Trogon is a type of bird. I wrote this poem as I often do, using a process: That is, I begin with a task that is purely mechanical, designed to produce words or phrases that must be used in the poem. After I do the process and generate the “raw material,” I come up with a subject or situation along which I can string those words in a way that feels natural and authentic.
I really like the simultaneous centripetal and centrifugal feelings of these words that want to go in different directions, but also somehow always seem to in the end belong together. I have certain nearly religious beliefs about language: that it expresses the collective historical intelligence of human beings, that it is the accumulated wisdom of all language users. Therefore I also have a great faith that my little humanity, plus the great wisdom of language, in the right combination and with the right degree of humility and attention on my part, will result in poems.
In “The Elegant Trogon,” I began in a certain place in the dictionary, and chose words moving backwards through the book until I reached another specified point (this process is taken directly from the one Matthea Harvey invented to create the stunning series “Terror of the Future” and “The Future of Terror” in her most recent book, Modern Life). I required myself to use the words in the order I found them. To be honest, I can’t remember what the exact original starting and ending words were, but along the way I came across the words trogon, tooth, supinate, spectacles, special effects, spadefoot, rictus, quantum, oral cavity, object lessons, moral law, loggerheads, lodestone, locked.
I had no idea what I was going to write the poem “about.” I just tried to pick words that seemed interesting and had a lot of different possibility but also specificity. Once I looked up the first word, “trogon,” and saw that there was a type called Elegant, I began to build something, and to both use and be moved around by the subsequent words I had chosen.
This is a not uncommon way for me to write poems, but it’s not the only way I write them. Usually I just sit down in the morning — either at a desk if I’m not traveling, or at a café, hopefully in a sunny spot where there is some but not too much conversation and music, and see what starts to happen.
This week, try writing a poem using the mechanical process outlined above and see where it takes you.
Matthew Zapruder is the author of two collections of poetry: American Linden and The Pajamaist, as well as co-translator from Romanian, along with historian Radu Ioanid, of Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems of Eugen Jebeleanu. His poems, essays and translations have appeared in many publications, including The Boston Review, Fence, Alaska Quarterly Review, Open City, Bomb, Harvard Review, Paris Review, The New Yorker and The New Republic. His third book of poems, Come On All You Ghosts, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2010. He lives in San Francisco, works as an editor for Wave Books, and teaches in the low residency MFA program at UC Riverside-Palm Desert. More information is available at matthewzapruder.wordpress.com.
This prompt is fantastic. It’s so close to how poetry works for me, so close to the way I work. Philosophically too, I love the idea of allowing language to speak, in a sense.
Interesting prompt for the exact OPPOSITE reason as Nathan -this is a completely different way for me to approach drafting a poem. I’m looking forward to trying it and making it work for me.
Fascinating prompt. I like the idea of thumbing through a dictionary and following the words like bread crumbs, to the heart of a poem.
I love the notion of “the great wisdom of language.” Zapruder’s approach reminds me of Elizabeth’s Bishop’s point that you should simply work at making a good poem, and whatever it is that you have “to say” will find its way in.
Thank you for the generosity behind this entire project.
Peter
I may go to the public library and track down some specialized dictionaries, glossaries, or indices. Such sources are so enlightening — all those words not in ordinary usage! Maybe I’ll use a dictionary of art or photography, or a baby name dictionary, or a dictionary of myth, or a Shakespearean concordance.
Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Great ideas, Therese.
Again, just to be absolutely clear, this was a process invented (as far as I know) by Matthea Harvey, which I used to write this poem. She deserves all the credit: check out the sequences in her incredible book Modern Life for the best examples of poems that result from this writing process.
I am not really mechanically inclined in any way shape or form…probably including poetry….hmm sitting on the mechanical toilet with pen and paper in hand might….well we will see what happens
[...] read write poem read write prompt #108, a mechanical approach, by matthew zapruder [...]
I did a similar exercise with a TV show, of all things. I chose some words that interested me from a National Geographic special on geology and ended up with a poem about writer’s block.
I am in a quandary..I no longer OWN a dictionary! Gave mine away years ago and just use an online one! What to do…what to do…?
I’d peel the screen off, and read it backwards. Which should generate a different kind of poem.
“every morning
it stirs and wakes me with
its lonely cooing and together
we wander into a sort of
guilty state..”
love this line…
mechanical toilet did not work…nor sitting on the dam mechanical staionary bike…I ll try the muchanical bull now and see or feel what happens
sounds like fun! i’m game (especially any prompt that mentions matthea harvey
@Cynthia: I have the same problem. I’m just going to use Dictionary.com’s browse feature and just move backwards through the alphabet and collect interesting words until my brain explodes. Or maybe I’ll find ten. Don’t know yet.
[...] week’s prompt by Matthew Zapruder invited us to explore the relationship between our individual use of language [...]
Here is a poem I feel like needs some revision. But I just don’t know where to go with it.
To understand
Is that something you believe in?
Do you understand the complexity of life?
You need to look round to see it all very clearly
Do you live on your whims?
Do you think about others before you act?
Don’t you ever consider the outcome?
You need to look deep in yourself
To understand
To answer these questions
Search for the reason
Then tell me how am I to understand
To understand what is you do
To understand what it is you say
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