Morning clouds split the morning sun,
the stream was clear and shallow,
grassy and
worms underneath.
Ellen Flynn, Mattapoisett Library Trustee, found this poem within the text of an old page torn from a book using a method of extracting poetry from the mundane, pre-existing visual word chatter of a random selection of writing. It’s an activity that she, along with Mattapoisett Librarian Sue Pizzolato and me, engaged in on April 21, a Saturday morning, as a way of indulging in a month dedicated to poetry.
I have my exposed, ridiculous and troublesome accidents,
Set me down close.
I must need him and the trees
I was walking under, a dozen apples
each came tumbling at my desire,
the provocation left me, a violent shower of hail struck the
ground,
I was down, my face a border of lemon-thyme,
bruised.
Pizzolato, like Flynn, is a poet in her own right. She is particularly skilled at seeking out the right words to stitch together the fabric of a feeling, a response revealed beneath the veil of another something entirely different conveyed by someone entirely different, distilling down a diluted page of paragraphs until all that remains are potent pinches of white space surrounding the allowed articulation, a divine dissection, poetic inception.
“People are discovering this little playful way they can react to words and with no pressure, create poems,” said Pizzolato.
The art of tearing out pages of text and extracting meaningful words and phrases is called “blackout poetry” or “erasure.” Guided by both instinct and intent, even an instructional manual on how to kayak can yield a poignancy that reveals an inner spark of the blackout poet’s pathos or creative ethos.
Flynn and Pizzolato set up a blackout poetry lab for guests to experiment with the art of found poetry, but as the time passed three women – and only three women – found themselves staying well past the allotted time, lost in the realm between black and white.
Dependent upon the mind, you exist.
We shut our eyes, also they are open.
Must I think so many pictures if I understand the
divine mind, the copies of existence,
of God, the infinite God,
belonging to them and contained in them?
We are shadows and
God’s a philosopher,
But in the abyss of boundless imagination
I do not know how to understand God or
conceive of His immensity.
As for the notions too fine for my gross thoughts
I cannot convey whatever the matter is.
The longer I think of them the more they
disappear and dwindle into nothing.
– Jean Perry, courtesy of Samuel Johnson
By Jean Perry