Robert Olen Bulter Writes Word by Word before My Eyes

I'm watching a Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer as he creates a short story, beginning to end. I'm only up to Episode 2 in this 17-part video series by Robert Olen Butler. Butler is the type who re-reads and revises word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph and so on, as he goes along. (Not a fast / rough draft and then later revision.) He describes fiction as coming from the dream state, not the conscious mind. Says a writer must enter a "zone" or state of meditation that accesses the writer's "dream center." However, he clearly allows his critical / analytical mind significant participation in the creation of the text. It's a contradiction which is clearly working for him. Maybe it works for Butler because he is primarily conjuring the voice of the narrator and imaginatively experiencing the sensory details of what the character is experiencing like a "method actor." The secondary issue is surface text--the right words in the right order.

For the Want of Wear

From: Max Karl Grimm
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 10:58 PM
To: "Keith Badowski"
Subject: Max Karl Grimm wrote on your Wall...

Max posted something on your Wall and wrote:

"Hello my friend,
How about a poem that stems from a dream that caused you to change something in your life? Much love and many blessings to you and yours,
Max"

For the Want of Wear by Keith Badowski

In my dream, the wind sleeps and no one breathes.
All night I’m a footpath blanketed with gravel,
bored without bicycles, not a sneaker to disturb me.
Numb with immobility, I long to be combed by a rake.

The absence of honeysuckle, the irrelevance of flowers
stirs no dread until I step from the untrodden black.
As if a drowned man revived, I gasp for air,
breathe deep of the atmosphered room of this grand hotel.

Unbathed, in slippered feet and rumpled pajamas,
I descend to the lobby, shuffle passed the lure of bacon
and bolt for the parking lot where I grab fistfuls of gravel
to throw to the sunlight, to the grass, the air of life.




Note: I tried the random pick-a-word again with O’Hara, but my finger stabbed the word “wings.” I was horrified! Wrote, “No, not a dream of flight again!” So in revulsion, my imagination fled in the opposite direction. As in the last poem, I set myself a limit of 12 lines, as much out of time consideration as anything. Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" informed the line: "I step from the untrodden black." Frost's poem also helped me in titling mine.

This poem marks my 6th spontaneous poem since I set my goal of 12. I’m starting to get doubtful that I’ll actually complete 12 in enough time to get the chapbook printed by Oct. 1st. I’ll have to check with the printer to see how close I can cut it. Those keeping track will note that this prompt also came in on Tuesday, Sept. 15th. Writing of the poem didn’t happen until today.

Friday Poems??

Got the following email from my blogliophile friend, Todd . . .

Hey, Keith --

What happened to the Friday spontaneous poetry? I bet you've got a backlog by now, so bring it on!

If you need some more keywords to get going again, add these to the pile:

Superfudge

Waterloo

Spartan

Watchmen

Tachyons

Hope all's well,

Todd

Hey Todd:

The requests dried up on 4th of July weekend and I didn’t have the mood anymore to nudge anyone else for prompts. Basically I quit writing on the 4th and hadn’t picked up keyboard or pen to do anything poetic until yesterday. The 3rd Thursday poetry workshop met again yesterday and I hate to go without something to get feedback on. So I dusted off a scrap of writing I’d started and whipped it into a more finished form for the group. It got some good responses but it’s not quite done yet.

Anyway, I was ambivalent about the arrival of your prompt. I almost turned it down. But the poetry bug seems to be biting again. Not to say this is anything all that great, but I’m getting more in the mood to play with words again. So thanks for the prompt. I hope you find the results interesting enough.

Peace,
Keith

Dream Theory

Superfudge is a book about a boy
who wants to be a bird.
That dream will never come true.

Waterloo ended Napoleon’s rule.
Some dreams end in abdication.

Although rumored to be lethal,
the Spartans left on permanent vacation.
Some dreams are never written, dying on the tongue.

Girls and boys are raised up for the Presidency,
but who watches those watchmen who let us down?
Too many dreams of justice never reach the psyche.

Tachyons, tachyons, theoretical but never slowing down—
dreams are like that, cold hard proof never found.

Dream: My Lost Papers

Last night I dreamed of walking in a museum in Birmingham. The exhibit theme was “letters, notes, and scraps of paper found in circulated library books.” The display items, various slips of paper, were placed in rows and rows of cubbyhole boxes which were open for anyone to reach inside. I picked up several pieces of paper and skimmed the writing there. I was strangely pleased that four of the items I picked up were in my own loose handwriting from different eras of my life. Among my lost papers were poems partially written, notes written to pass among friends in grade school, letters I’d folded and attempted to preserve with Scotch tape plastered to the creases, research notes from reference books, and grocery/to do lists. I experienced a sense of pride at finding my own writing displayed among this collection, as if my writings were as important as the manuscripts of John Lennon, T.S. Eliot, or Jerry Seinfeld. Perhaps this dream originated from my recent experiences at the Emory University research library where they have in their collections significant batches of manuscripts by such poetic greats as Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Also my parents who are preparing to sell their house in New York called me the other day to tell me that they found boxes I’d stashed away in the attic. Among the items they found were my high school yearbooks (which I’d given up for lost), Star Wars action figures, and my set of Hardy Boys books.