“I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks… or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don’t bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.” -Allen Ginsberg
Do you have little notebooks? I do. I collected them for years and numbered each. I called them Dramatic Wandering 1, 2, 3, and on. I stopped writing in them 3 years ago when I began living my life computer-side.
Little notebooks are important for writers, and so is leaving the electronic light for a while.
I pulled out my very last Dramatic Wandering from 2005 and read just one page. I followed Ginsberg’s very simple instructions above, and this is what I got:
Anxious Buddha
Nothing sounds right
quit teaching
having being
Stupid little articles
stopped forgiving
No man
No friends
No job
past thinking freshman
bicycle anger
brother wakes construction
chant rug sleep
I’m not going to lie: I’m not really good with these types of poems, but I bet you are.
If you try the exercise, send me what you make and I’ll post it with a link back to wherever you exist in cyperspace.
Three cheers to making it new!
Poem of the Month 
all red, the life i dread, stolen bread, left for near dead,
blood in my head, salty tears shed, enough said
Thanks Muriel. I’ll post this next week. Any links you want to add?
Hey Muriel. Posted it today. Thanks for sending it in.