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  “The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passers by and juxtaposition cut-ups. And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same. The best writing seems to be done almost by accident.” — William S. Burroughs

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Our first entry in this week’s Friday Poegle Contest, from Brad on the Upper West Side.  This week’s theme is “brothers and sisters”.  Brad offers us….

For a Sibling

Sister come close and remember with me.
Dusk on the railway, dress up, mom and dad,
Corner shop porn mags we found in the woods,
The fairy tales of protective brothers.

Chapter one of what they didn’t read us
Said something about a little monster.
We always thought we were being funny,
But she didn’t come back after that day.

They should have been direct and just told us.
Was it there in the drawings, the cartoons?
All by ourselves from morning until dark,
Am I right that they should have just told us?

Do you not remember we were happy,
Children of traditional modern times.
Lives come undone; we don’t have to know why.
Just be with me and tell me who you are.

-Brad on the Upper West Side (search phrase “when we were little”)

Through Kepler’s borrowed telescope,

Io shines in golden light, hiding its secrets.

On Europa, Ganymede and Callisto

Heavy elements, volcanoes, extreme radiation.

Icy surfaces are common, smooth frozen plains.

Dinner table conversations on

Ideas about constructing biospheres,

Melting ice, obtaining minerals, and ways

Humans might survive ultra-cold temperatures.

Calculations on cometary orbits,

Cataclysmic quantum signatures,

Current time-keeping conventions of Earth.

-Jeff in Massachusetts (search phrase “on the moons of jupiter”)

The lands that witnessed the first steps of San Martín’s heroic enterprise lay defiant before our eyes.  Caldwell was emotional.  Tayo noted we had left the city municipalities behind and were entering one of the “rural sectors.”  Currie had to rely largely on closed-circuit television to watch our progress.
 
Look closely at the photograph.  The robotic arm is visible in the picture’s upper right corner.  The ring blinked like an eye.  You can even barely see the rainbow. 
 
The United States looked very small from the shuttle’s window.  United. States. small. shuttle’s. window.
 
Check.
 
 
- Lauren in Wisconsin
 
(search phrase:  “from the shuttle window”)

Update: amateur astronomers can apparently get a view of astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper ’s lost bag from earth with a decent pair of binoculars or a telescope.  More fodder for the Friday Poegle Contest’s theme: “lost in space”.

Space.com: Backyard Skywatchers Find Tool Bag Lost in Space

Lost Astronaut’s Tool Bag Spotted Floating Over Canada

Astronauts busy collecting recycled urine samples

Thanksgiving in space: stiff turkey, bland yams, piss to wash it down

Today the New York Times reports that “a concatenation of puzzling results from an alphabet soup of satellites and experiments has led a growing number of astronomers and physicists to suspect that they are getting signals from a shadow universe of dark matter that makes up a quarter of creation but has eluded direct detection until now. ”

At Poegles.com, when we read phrases like “anomalies in the sky tell you what to look for”, and ”the stakes for dark matter go beyond cosmology”, we get excited.  Even better are sentences like ”you could think of it as a hamster running around on a wheel in its cage. We cannot see the hamster or the cage, but we can sort of feel the impact of the hamster running.” 

We hope you’ll take some inspiration, too, and write a poegle that addresses this week’s contest theme- ‘lost in space’.  Who knows what you might turn up?  Maybe even some exotic dark matter.  Visit the contest here.

We like to make poegles out of common phrases- especially those that describe ‘moments in time’ that we all share.  A collage of such moments can create an interesting, imagined account.  Like this….

It Was A Long Drive Home

It was a long drive home on the windy dark highway. Oh, the sky was sunny and brilliant, but all that was, like everything else in life, on the other side of my windshield. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just encountered a member of the next wave of female guitarists. We stopped in Mojave to grab dinner and share stories. Forger was due to fly an F-16 in the morning at 7:00 am, so he decided to part ways with us there. Then we had to stop at the warehouse so Mom could check for emails. It’s been just like that for 57 years now. When I got home, my roommate greeted me with a hug. “I’m sorry,” she said. She already knew. It was back to work the next day, but the call of the mountain remained. I changed my Match.com profile to reflect that I was taken.

-Editor (search phrase “it was a long drive home”)

John Lundberg over at Huffington Post has a great column today on the healing power of poetry.  Lundberg cites work by poetry therapist Perie Longo.  Yes, there is such a thing.  Longo explores a patient’s poetry “as a window into the psychology of the poet”, says Lundberg.  

We argue at poegles.com that though poegles are created with words from others, the act of their composition gives us an insight into the poegler.  As you make decisions about what phrases to search, what text to choose, what text to leave out, what text to rearrange, you are inserting your own psychology and artistic imprint onto the resulting language.  While none of the words in a poegle are your own, the poegle itself is purely yours, and contains something that is uniquely true about you.

See earlier post for the potential medical benefits of poegling.

How do you get a successful poetry movement going?  Apparently, according to this podcast, there are some tricks of the trade, brought to you by the Objectivists.

How do we turn Poegles into a movement?  Share your thoughts, please.  And listen to the podcast here:

How to start a poetry movement

Here’s a light little poegle based on the search phrase “googling my friends”, a common form of internet voyuerism that people regularly engage in, I’m told.

Googling My Friends

It’s amazing what you can learn about people you know.
I’ve been googling my friends all week, to figure out who they are.

I have discovered that many of my friends
Are much more successful than I am in terms of relationships.

I’m so curious about people.
The results can keep you busy for hours.

I’m usually really bored at work.
I’m sitting in my office drinking my ninth cup of coffee.

-Editor

My Mother Always Wore

The blue silk Chinese coat
Dr. Ramón had given her

A copper MIA bracelet with
“Capt. Robert Kent 12-20-68″ on it

A little sack of salt around her neck
to keep her from having chills

Nil Simile shoes, from the shop
owned by Rattray the tailor

Shalimar back then
with Tangee lipstick

That frosted pink color
I never really liked

The mood ring I bought her
when I was six years old

And a Spanish coin from
her “fallen star,” my father.

- Jamie in Brooklyn (search phrase “my mother always wore”)

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