Paint Patch Poetry Process

I came across the idea of using paint swatches for prompts in Suleika Jaouad's The Book of Alchemy.  One of the essay writers talked about pulling out a paint swatch and writing about whatever comes to mind.  It's not a new idea, of course.  The world is full of objects which might inspire our words.

On Thursday, I took the paint swatches to class and had students take them out to their trees to try to match the color.  They had a whole worksheet to complete, with tasks that had them describe each part of the tree with more depth and tasks that had them observe the tree from various amounts of distance.  For most students, it worked far more effectively than I anticipated.  Hurrah!

I stayed in the classroom so that the students could move back and forth between classroom and tree without worrying about lugging along all their stuff.  In the first classroom, I could watch them work from my vantage point by the windows.  In my second classroom, I had a more limited view.

I hadn't brought a book or grading to do, so I decided to do some writing of my own.  I was less interested in freewriting than in creating a poem.  I decided that for each paint swatch, I'd choose one of the color names and write a line.  I did this seven times, leaving room between each line.

The first swatch was "cold foam," a lovely term for light beige.  I wrote this line:  The cold foam of the ocean.  Another swatch was "wayward willow," and this line came to me:  Wayward willow and salty breezes.

I went back and added lines after the first lines.  So now, the first stanza looked like this:

The cold foam of the ocean

I relish the deserted beach.

The class was far from over, so I did the paint patch pulling exercise again to add additional shading and to inspire new lines.  I got one patch with "pickling spices," and now the original stanza looked like this:

Wayward willow and salty breezes

offer little resistance to the coming storm

pickling spices shaping future events.

On Friday, I returned to the lines and stanzas.  Now the first stanza looks like this:

The deserted beach, a latte

littered with the cold foam

from the ocean, the moon

a harsh barista.

And now, it's not the first stanza.

It was great fun, creating this way.  I usually start with an idea, which makes revision harder for me.  But with this process, I had no commitment to the lines and images.  I had no sure feeling that I was even creating viable lines or headed to a poem.

Yesterday my first thought, as I stared at the lines, was to call it an interesting failed experiment and move along.  But I pushed through, and now I have a fairly decent poem.  

Will I do it again?  Probably.  But even if I don't, it's good to remember that there are many poetry processes.