Word Math and Summer School

Mathematics (Photo credit: Terriko)

I’m signing up for a summer writing class, which excites me in the same way that having cupcakes stashed in the fridge excites me. My problem is which class to take for my second session with the UCLA Writers Program. I took an introductory poetry class last fall with Kimberly Burwick, MFA and award-winning poet who was wonderful and generous with time, encouragement, and patience for the handful of us who hadn’t the slightest clue what we were doing.

In ten weeks I had drafted about ten poems (air quotes here), and so thought to take another poetry class. This one is focused on form and meter. The poetry that I enjoy most is surprisingly mathematical. Each line seems to function just like an algebraic equation or part of one, pieced together with words chosen with care. Managed well, a poetic line in combination with other lines should result in tension and release, balance and a kind of quiet power.

That’s how I see it, this early in my writing life. Unfortunately I never really was any good at math, except for 6^th grade algebra (thank you, Sister Stephanie). This insinuation of capability with numbers could account for my fixation on getting lines to agree with each other, balance out, and make sense of x at the end. But should I spend my summer working with verbal math?

The other class is a new course, experimental and playful, designed to address the writing process. As my creative juices have grown stagnant, with sediment swirling around the bottom (of what, exactly? A wine glass comes to mind) this one (using found texts to generate new text) could be just the cure.

God knows I have scribbled down enough phrases overheard, stray quotations, and dream fragments, scrunched into wallet crevices along with receipts and boarding passes, thinking to use them in the future. I just never thought of how they might come together and provide value.

Until recently. I’d tell you more, but right now I have a mopey Corgi that needs to be taken to the vet.

Pembroke Corgi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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