I've been thinking of Dillon's project the last few days, picturing a poetry littered landscape--much more appealing than what's now littering this scrawl of a city. (Though I must admit...I live in Alameda). I've been thinking of a friend who dreamed of living in an artists loft and then did...in West Oakland. She constantly told stories of things occuring under her window and dubbed her street 'the lost corner of Oakland.' She swore the police didn't know the corner existed.
But how many many corners are like this.
How many many corners are not like this.
How many many corners are not even corners but large lushly landscaped curves in the hills where it costs millions to not live on corners like this.
I said in class that if you were going to include Spanish language poetry then you needed to make an attempt at recognizing all ethnic groups with a large presence in Oakland. In thinking further, I take back my statement, sort of. The poems will be scattered all over the city. No one will see them all--you probably won't even read all 10,000. No one will know what groups you've included, which you haven't. You could attempt posting them in ethnic specific neighborhoods, Chinatown for example, or by certain religious areas, strategically placed outside a temple, mosque, church. In that case, strategically placed outside a sex shop, Oaksterdam, bailbondsman, etc. Possibilities are endless. Finding poetry in unexpected places is going to be most effective when it relates most closely to the specific people that are going to find it--this seems so obvious now when I write it and yet somehow in my head it sounded much more astute (I hate that).
But, you were really looking for textual critique. On the whole, if you're going to do poster sizes and want people to read them, the poems could be a bit shorter. Not too much so that you're dumbing it down...I understand that getting them to STOP and read is part of the point. But the text is going to have to be large enough to catch some attention and big text=short poem. 'the real city' is the most succesful of these pieces for me, though I like the line breaks on the page and you didn't read them. I envision it as each stanza on a poster and seven trees/lampposts in a row each have a stanza. "(West Grand Avenue intersects Martin Luther King Jr.)" seems like something 'we' (not sure of 'we' or who that really includes, but I'll stick with it anyway) do in poetry now--the parenthetical, the placing--but in this case it is infinitely more effective. Its a much needed grounding--you are not dealing with a poetic readership, and the grounding is going to tell them, wait, this is about right here, this corner where I'm standing, and so then what else is this poster saying about where I'm standing. I think many of the poems could employ this physicallity succesfully. And if the project were to ever take a more cohesive form (cohesive as in collected in one place, in posters, in book) the parenthetical street signs could ring out as a chorus--the Oakland poetic choir.
We did not talk about the longer piece, but I want to briefly mention that the end is very powerful (from "if I owned a television.") This could be the entire poem. The language is simple, the problems immensely complex (and again there are street references).
Rock on.
But how many many corners are like this.
How many many corners are not like this.
How many many corners are not even corners but large lushly landscaped curves in the hills where it costs millions to not live on corners like this.
I said in class that if you were going to include Spanish language poetry then you needed to make an attempt at recognizing all ethnic groups with a large presence in Oakland. In thinking further, I take back my statement, sort of. The poems will be scattered all over the city. No one will see them all--you probably won't even read all 10,000. No one will know what groups you've included, which you haven't. You could attempt posting them in ethnic specific neighborhoods, Chinatown for example, or by certain religious areas, strategically placed outside a temple, mosque, church. In that case, strategically placed outside a sex shop, Oaksterdam, bailbondsman, etc. Possibilities are endless. Finding poetry in unexpected places is going to be most effective when it relates most closely to the specific people that are going to find it--this seems so obvious now when I write it and yet somehow in my head it sounded much more astute (I hate that).
But, you were really looking for textual critique. On the whole, if you're going to do poster sizes and want people to read them, the poems could be a bit shorter. Not too much so that you're dumbing it down...I understand that getting them to STOP and read is part of the point. But the text is going to have to be large enough to catch some attention and big text=short poem. 'the real city' is the most succesful of these pieces for me, though I like the line breaks on the page and you didn't read them. I envision it as each stanza on a poster and seven trees/lampposts in a row each have a stanza. "(West Grand Avenue intersects Martin Luther King Jr.)" seems like something 'we' (not sure of 'we' or who that really includes, but I'll stick with it anyway) do in poetry now--the parenthetical, the placing--but in this case it is infinitely more effective. Its a much needed grounding--you are not dealing with a poetic readership, and the grounding is going to tell them, wait, this is about right here, this corner where I'm standing, and so then what else is this poster saying about where I'm standing. I think many of the poems could employ this physicallity succesfully. And if the project were to ever take a more cohesive form (cohesive as in collected in one place, in posters, in book) the parenthetical street signs could ring out as a chorus--the Oakland poetic choir.
We did not talk about the longer piece, but I want to briefly mention that the end is very powerful (from "if I owned a television.") This could be the entire poem. The language is simple, the problems immensely complex (and again there are street references).
Rock on.
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