"_______ Thread", and
(2) again, I'll let Maureen from NaPoWriMo explain this:
Today we challenge you to write a paragraph that briefly recounts a story, describes the scene outside your window, or even gives directions from your house to the grocery store. Now try erasing words from this paragraph to create a poem or, alternatively, use the words of your paragraph to build a new poem.
Okay, so I'm going to walk you through my process. I added a prompt by taking this week's word bank from the Sunday Whirl blog (which I use fairly frequently) and wrote a paragraph about something I experienced today, trying to work in all twelve words from the word bank. Then I did the erasure process, coming up with a rather minimalist poem which I hope conveys the same general message. Here's how it worked:
[Word bank from The Sunday Whirl:]
Inject
Treat
Confess
Tale
Sect
Dress
Channel
Check
Align
Sand
Torrid
Traverse
[My paragraph:]
We step in the weaver shop at the colonial village, and the
woman in a dustcap who is sewing a dress treats us to tales of the olden days, and a crash course in the
use of a loom. I learn that the vertical threads are the warp, and the
horizontal ones we weave across are the weft. She invites me to try it, so I
inject a shuttle card with a cotton thread through a channel opened by the bars
in the loom, then push down the beater bar to align the thread into the weave,
then open the warp again to traverse cloth with shuttle the other way. I do
this several times and check my work - I confess it’s not very good. But this
cloth in process is just another piece, no matter how imperfect, that would
have been added to the fabric of our founding. So much sand through the glass,
so many movements and sects and parties and characters that passed through, so
many torrid, passionate stories of war and freedom and rights, that might have
torn another nation apart, rent its garment of identity. Yet we’re still here,
and the loom is still running.
[My poem:]
Thread
the weaver treats a crash
in the loom
the warp and the weft
align
to traverse
shuttle the other way
this cloth is imperfect,
the fabric of founding
sand through the glass
movements and sects
torrid stories
rend its identity
yet we’re still here
still running
And finally, here's the latest draft, thanks to some constructive criticism from my wife, which includes bringing in more of the process into the metaphor:
American Thread
the lamb yields
to the shear
for the sake
of a clump of fleece
carded and combed
to fibers
that are twisted together
to a thread
the weaver crashes the bar
in the loom
the warp and the weft
align
to traverse and
shuttle the other way
this cloth is imperfect
the fabric of founding
movements and parties and
characters come and go
torrid stories
rend our identity
yet we’re still here
the loom still running
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