Digital Academics, Short Prose

Concrete Poems

 I have to say that reading and seeing different concrete poems was very eye opening for me this week. Without a doubt, I feel as though I learned the most from Dan Waber’s Strings. I really liked Letter Man by Adam Lisckiewicz, but I could not stop watching the strings. The final flash element, poidog, was fantastic. I feel as though the earlier segments of the work did a good job of preparing me to really watch and understand when Adam showed us that words are strings that he pulls from his mouth. After watching this, and getting to watch the shape of the words as well as the words themselves, I feel like I have been introduced to a great new tool for writing/creating. Moving, animated words, and the meaning making that can happen in this space feels so very freeing. I decided that I would attempt to make a concrete poem of my own. Below, I am including a conversion of an older piece I wrote for one of Jay’s classes. I realized that allowing the words to take on the shape of the poem could lend a different sort of imagery and path for meaning making for the reader. While this is not as dynamic as the works that we saw this week, I feel like the reshaping of the piece has made quite a bit of a difference. I hope you enjoy it.

Concrete Poem

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