Since this month is "trick or treat" lets write a "meme" poem. There is twist in the trick or treat though. When you write your challenge poem, post it on your blog and leave me a link to where it is here on this thread along with your entry and lets see if anyone actually starts answering your meme and passing it around the internet. Please don't mention in your blog what I am up to. I want to sit back and watch.
The best "meme" poem will be published in OCHO 7.
Deadline is October 31 of course.
On another note, if you have written a poem that was inspired by one of my challenges and it was accepted for publication elsewhere, I'd like to hear about it. I think it is terrific if it is.
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11 comments:
Didi,
can you clarify this exercise a bit? To simply say one is to write a "meme" poem seems rather like saying one should write "a poem on a theme." What meme? (or what theme?) Is "trick or treat" the meme?
I had a similar question. I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for.
. . . like asking for a "genre novel," no? Or has a "meme poem" become a more definite thing than I realize -- like saying a "symbolist poem," which employs a symbolist strategy (no matter what the symbol). Does a meme poem employ a meme strategy? I have simply a basic functional idea about the meme qua meme: it's like a trope, but more general. ;-) it consists of the set of words, ideas, and most especially phrases, and like that, yes?
So far the question seems more trick than treat (if you'll pardon my so phrasing it). ;-)
A meme is a thought or an idea that transmits itself like a virus. For example the word "cool" or the more recent "'sup dog". Urban legends like the alligator that got flushed down the toilet is another example. Other memes have shaped the world in the form of religions or political movements.
So my take is: write an infectious poem, something that transmits from mouth to mouth or email to email... time to get creative.
Okay, I'm getting it now. The key phrase is here:
<< When you write your challenge poem . . . >>
Didi is asking us to write a CHALLENGE poem -- i.e., a poem incorporates something or other "as a would-be meme" which presumably will blossom into full-blown meme status IF we challenge others (only on the blog? or by pestering 'em w/ email?) to follow suit and write their own poem that incorporates the same (nascent, but now sprouting) meme.
In short, it's an assignment (or challenge) to try to set a meme-challenge afloat. The trick being we're not to let on about the META-challenge (the mother of challenges) found at Cafe' Cafe'. Which also means the meme-poem's camp followers (or, the challenge respondees) would need to be other-than-habitues of this place.
(I was about to quote didi as epigraph to my meme-sonnet, but was dissuaded by above admonishment not to "let on.")
cheers,
d.i.
A virus..okay, off I go to Snopes for inspiration.
David has caught on - he already has a following...
I am watching....
not sure my meme is sparking much interest, tho i know there are readers out there.
damn my fickle public.
Here it is:
Meme Challenge
And here it is:
What was the Question Again?
The color outside her window
was chartreuse. Pink ponies dangled
from the faucet, none of them hers;
as she soaked in the bath,
she made the tiny horses gallop.
They seemed so happy, she, happier
as she slipped beneath the suds.
The woman was black and white;
the woman was pregnant and nude.
The moth clung to the lantern
as if it had finally found love
or the moon. The cat was the color
of snow and ghosts. Her father was cold
and still. The aviatrix flew and fell,
fell and flew. Outside, the green leaves
are falling and dying, dying and falling
under the harvest moon. How many dead
dads have I got? What’s my favorite month?
The month I was born into the night.
One, I thought. My window is black;
the moth is laid out on its back.
I’ve never loved light. October. Two.
"Unconscious Mutterings #193 On 10/19/06"
1 Weeks :: of waiting for you.
2 Cough :: and I'll wake up without you, a sweet
3 Jail :: of fog and pillow kisses, the commensurate
4 Produced :: in similitude and simulacrum.
5 ? :: An empty question mark hangs in the darkness, stuck
6 Stapler :: of a jammed up heart. Who will beat it
7 Next :: ? Would something tell me, the shy
8 Perky :: girl in the blue sweater? A lit
9 Oxygen :: mask on a blue bed? What
10 Musical :: in the world would we sing to, dance?
* Be there in the fog of your fancy - Do it subconsciously, sublimely subliminal.
posted by Lorna Dee Cervantes at 10:50 AM 0 comments
Here it is.
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