I’m reading Kim Addonizio’s book Ordinary genius, a guide for the poet within (2009). In the beginning I didn’t really like her workbook-ish style, but gradually my impression changed, and now, a quarter into the book, I’m indeed starting to enjoy it. In between writing challenges & exercise there are some very interesting and important thoughts on writing; on why we write, on how we (should) do it, and also on whom the writer is, or could be. Here Addonizio’s voice is not so much that of a teacher, as the voice of an honest and caring friend sharing her discernments.

Today my focus has been on Chapter 7: line, breath & vision – its a chapter on layout, on how the words are placed on the page, and on the energy and speed of the poem.

Addonizio says:

As you move across the page, the white space comes into play. Any musician will tell you that silence is an important part of music. Similarly, white space is a part of the poem.

And she continues:


Scientists have discovered that outer space – what we think of as space – isn’t. It turns out there is something they call dark matter, and it exists between the stars. So maybe for a poem, the page is white matter, rather than blank space.

 

While trying to catch some of Addonizio’s ideas about layout and space, a very different  artist suddenly made my mind a visit, namely Cornelia Parker, and especially her work Cold Dark Matter (represented above). And while delving on how and where to put words on a page, silence and noise, rhyme and sound, dark and white matter …. etc. etc, Parker’s idea of the art of blowing things up, this very destructive attitude, suddenly struck me as a very fruitful way forward – .

ps 1: When I was a student a professor once told me that the problem with Deconstructivism was that it would be impossible to build a deconstructivist building.

ps 2: I have always had a crush on impossibilities –

ps 3: writing exploded poems are no exception –

White matter … (s),

o-la-la