Prompety Prompts

Here are the prompts for this week (all taken from Bernadette Mayer's "Experiments" first published in the famous L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E journal from the late 1970s)

a. Pick any word at random (noun is easy): let mind play freely around it until a few ideas have passed through. Then seize on them, look at them & record. Try this with a non-connotative word, like "so" etc.

b. Rewrite someone else's writing. Maybe someone formidable.

c. Get a group of words (make a list or select at random); then form these words (only) into a piece of writing - whatever the words allow. Let them demand their own form, and/or: Use certain words in a set way, like, the same word in every line, or in a certain place in every paragraph, etc. Design words.

d. Eliminate material systematically from a piece of your own writing until it's 'ultimately' reduced, or, read or write it backwards (line by line or word by word). Read a novel backwards.

e. Experiment with theft & plagiarism in any form that occurs to you.

f. Construct a poem as though the words were three-dimensional objects (like bricks) in space. Print them on large cards, if necessary.

g. Attempt tape recorder work, that is, speaking directly into the tape, perhaps at specific times.

h. Use (take, write in) a strict form and/or try to destroy it, e.g. the sestina.