I really cannot stop thinking about this poem that we read during the first week of class...it was "A Martian Sends A Postcard Home." I keep thinking about how creative it was of Craig Raine to take the everyday and make it so unique and I really wanted to take a stab at it myself...so here it goes...I would love to see if someone would guess what they are, but I am gonna tell you anyway...
Legs in motion.
Moving so fast-
so high off the ground
that I wonder why they don't fall backward.
Arms moving
with bars in them-
but the bars have round pieces
attached to the ends.
Some are bigger than others-
size does matter I assume.
The ones that are bigger
make the peoples faces writhe
In what looks like pain-
all bunched up and pout-like.
But they slap hands
and start again.
This short little poem was just me trying to capture what it is like at...THE GYM! I am not sure if it is the best, but its my first crack at defamiliarization.
Taylor,
ReplyDeleteI’m not great at “defamiliarizing” either, so I’m in the same boat as you there. To me it seems that where “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home” describes objects as foreign, you’re more focused on describing the action of working out as foreign. I also tried to “improv” off of that poem and the problem I had was trying to find a balance between describing the object well enough to let others know what it is and “hiding” the object by describing it in weird new ways, and I don’t know if you had the same problem. Of course, in class, I was utterly confused by the poem until everyone explained what most of the objects were. That being said, I like your use of “size does matter” right in the middle of your poem. Not only does it say the opposite of what we hear, but it’s also a little out of context. It sounds funny in an off-hand kind of way.
Try to be even more specific, though. Focus on ONE of those people, for example, in the gym, rather than on the general "legs moving." What does the big guy in the tight red shirt do? How can you describe a bench press--a particular activity--in an unfamiliar way?
ReplyDeleteI remember wanting to talk about the gym one time in a poem, and I came up with this passage:
Mounting the stationary bike, you bear witness
to Sheila in her leotard amid an hour’s worth
of miniature death, her heart rapping on its chamber door.
You’ve traveled beyond the distant water
fountain, beyond the sauna crying its salt on the floor,
have been conveyed nowhere in twenty minutes,
the eighteenth green dangling before you in simulcast.
Warmed up, you scoff at the fat guy in the small car
of a hack-squat machine, load-bearing and ridiculous,
while Christina Aguilera taunts from the far shore
of her pop song, indigenous, bland as a high school
witch club.