Poetics

Two-fold purpose: describe the process of composing, your method and rationale for employing the specific lessons of our authors in this experiment; (more descriptive than “poetics inventory” blog entries).

Additionally, from your project, produce a “guide for unconventional discourse” (new mode of thinking and expression); ideally, someone else could emulate your poetics, wanting to compose a work of “critical expressionism” or “narrative assemblage”: an “antidote” to the modes of judgment (belief and reason) and forgetting aspects of experience. More directly, describe your method for our “impossible task” of expressing affect of lived experience through particular techniques (be specific, relative to your project).

The process of composing this assemblage was very organic for me. I included a lot of things that moved me, and that I felt were related somehow to the story. I was concerned sometimes that others might not be able to interpret some of the more abstract entries, but then I remembered that I was the reader as well as the author and since they made sense to me I decided to include them anyway. Since I loved the construction as well as the content of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I based much of the format of this project off of that novel. The image of unsent letters was very powerful to me, so I liked creating the tension between two characters who are writing to themselves but also to each other; two characters that desperately have something to say but are unable to say it. Another thing I liked about Foer’s work was the presence of images. Only through careful reading and intuition is the reader of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close able to discern the meaning behind the photos in that novel, but I am sure that they all have a meaning. I chose to emulate this through the various photos and works of art showcased in my assemblage, as well as with the repetition of the photo of the girl on the swing. Additionally, I think that the nonlinear discourse present in all of our part two novels was a powerful influence. Rather than going towards Burrow’s cut-up method, I decided to go with a more traditional nonlinear discourse. This made sense to me because I wrote the vignettes out of chronological order anyway. Only two of the letters have dates, so it is up to the reader to place them in an era of time. To me they are all written in various stages over a period of about eighteen years.  I also enjoyed incorporating cultural elements, like Silko did in Ceremony. I think it adds more of a cultural perspective, instead of just the character’s perspectives.

My best advice for those wanting to emulate my project is to act on affect. The times that I included disciplinary research were when I wanted to educate my readers; I wanted them to know about abuse from an empirical point of view, rather than from my subjective experience. But I believe that the two modes work hand in hand; I don’t think that the experience of abuse or of witnessing someone being abused could be fully expressed in either mode, but only in both modes together. Bearing that in mind, I still thought it was important to produce the affect. I did that by using images, videos, et cetera that I associated with the experience and the themes that arose from that. For example, the theme of innocence and innocence lost is very important to the character Scott, so I tried to embody his struggle with that concept in photos, quotes, and poems. Mostly though, I just wrote from the heart. When I was writing my personal narratives I really dug deep to express what was inside of me and what resonated with me. When I was trying to express Scott’s experience, I just pretended that I was him and I wrote from his (my) heart. The only way we can express another’s experience is by viewing the experience in the way that they do, which can be very different from the way we perceive it ourselves. But there can also be similarities, and I hope I exemplified this throughout my assemblage. As for forgetting aspects of experience; I think that you could even embrace that in your expression. For example, my past is something that I have tried for many years to put behind me. In fact, when I read over some of my past letters to Kyle, I realized that I had forgotten a lot about what happened. While I think that it is sometimes important to forget and not dwell in order to move on, I think it is dually important to express those things that you try to forget, and also why you tried to forget them. Only then can the whole spectrum of experience be expressed.