Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Chapbook Length Abecedarian?

Yesterday, I was playing with a poem idea that I return to periodically. I needed to write 2 poems to catch up, so I wrote one called "Jesus Tweets." A poemesque thing in less than 140 characters.

Then I remembered my idea about a to-do list of Jesus. I wrote an obvious entry: "Heal leper." Then a not so obvious one: "Heirloom seeds to Martha." Then I noticed 2 Hs, and my brain went wild.

Could I write a 26 poem sequence? Could each poem be part of a larger abecedarian, which might be publishable as a chapbook? The first poem would be a to-do list of Jesus, with each entry starting with A. Next, B. And so on.

Would it get trite quickly? Perhaps. Would the end result irritate readers? I have no idea. I want to think it would depend on what I wrote. But end result aside, it would be an interesting exercise.

I've never started with a chapbook idea right from the beginning. I've usually written multitudes of poems and only gradually noticed a theme emerging.

It cheers me to have this idea, and thus, I will do it. I will still continue to write my poem a day through the end of April though. I've gotten to the point where coming up with a poem a day is hard. I'm thinking wistfully back to the early days, when ideas flowed, and I felt like I had plenty of time to write them. This week is one of those slammed-for-time weeks. I seem to be having more and more of them. Sigh.

1 comment:

Kelli Russell Agodon - Book of Kells said...

I also did a Jesus Tweets poem-- it would be funny if we sent them to the same place.