16 Comments

Lisette, your poems feel very deep. It’s cool to see them on the page and then typed out! Love seeing your creative flow. I’m also googling pantoum after this! Great post.

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Thank you, Kim. <3 I may have never typed any of these poems out if not for this post-- just letting them live between the pages usually feels fine..... and yet I'm so glad I took them into this other realm. I can really see them in such a different light this way! And I look forward to anything that comes up with your pantoum discovery!

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Jan 6·edited Jan 6Liked by Lisette Murphy

P.s. I saw Sari Botton read a three word poem in a video on here. It knocked my socks off it was so good.

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I followed Kim’s Restack here. What fun! I’m a northwesterner, and I love the soggy squish of your Oregon poem. You managed those 3-word lines like a breeze! My hair limp / from saturated fog / I sniffle once / protecting your book / against the damp.

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Thank you so much for connecting with me here, Tara! I'm so glad Kim's sweet repost found you in soggy squishy solidarity. "protecting your book / against the damp"!! ooooooohhhhh! evocative!! <3 Nice to meet you through poetry.

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Haha. I’m in Pacific Northwest watching the windstorm coming this afternoon. Ocean is rocking. No wonder this poem resonated! Especially this time of year. 🌊 🌧️ 💨

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Oooo, the winter Pacific! You’re singing in my language! Do you feel the soul could use a good sand-blast from a stormy beach from time to time? Mmm.

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I’m so far from home-- blow some of that cold wet sand my way! 🫶🏼

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Ohhhhhh I can smell that wild salty air from here-- opening myself to it in gulps!

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Jan 6Liked by Lisette Murphy

Ooh Oregon. Such a good evocation. I feel that one in my skin and bones. 🌲

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It melts my heart that other folks with Oregon in their bodies feel it in this poem, too. <3 Thanks so much for connecting with me here, Rebecca.

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Jan 6Liked by Lisette Murphy

Love your prompts, these OPPs, and your quadruple-poem post. The first is especially vivid and touching.—amazing how much can be said in fewer words. Your sketchbook photo is also a prompt for me—to return to writing out poetry before typing it.

I'm impressed both by how prolific your 2023 was, and how speedily you're writing these gems. Yet another prompt there—to write a pantoum in 20 minutes. Freaks me out a bit—it's counter to my sometimes belabored process—so I'm all for it.

Also, thanks for the shout-out! I just read your post, and funnily enough, yesterday I posted the pantoum you inspired with a shout-out.

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So interesting to know everyone's differing creation styles-- I so rarely move my poems from the page to the screen! When I do, it's like a whole different poem emerges... I almost didn't include that photo of the three-word-sentence page because I was like, "oh, this is such a jumbled mess of me thinking on the page"-- like, yknow, it's not "pretty"--- but Neon was like, NO, ITS SO BEAUTIFUL TO SEE!! So I'm really glad that I did. I think this is one of those invisible-to-you creator moments. Like for me it's snapping a photo of the sandbox where I've been mushing stuff around- I forget that the raw material has its own wonder.

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Jan 8Liked by Lisette Murphy

Well, I'd say kudos to Neon for the encouragement, and to you for including it. There's something so potent, raw and human about the brain-to-hand process. It's nice to see 'the real you' through thought and pathfinding. The computer completely strips out the sense of that in favor of efficiency, uniformity and productization. I tend to write digitally because it's 'clean' and I can spin out lots of iterations quickly, but it also causes more overthinking and, as you said, changes the nature of each piece.

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Yes to all--- I’ve been reflecting so much on how the raw process-- literally “showing your work”-- is maybe all we have left as human artists in the face of AI. (Lol you know how I get!) At the end of the day, any ol robot can create “content”, but leaving the evidence bare of how I walked myself there is special in light of that fact-- I’m wondering if all the scribbling arrows and trial lines that get crossed out and left out and the order shifting and all that motion that precedes an end product might be the most valuable part by some intriguing contemporary metrics... It’s also a real practice in vulnerability! So Thank You for receiving it!

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Jan 10Liked by Lisette Murphy

It's interesting to note how Midjourney reveals no journey—it's opaque to the average viewer. Whatever processing that computers and servers are doing to collect information and render content (some may call it art and writing, but that's a whole 'nuther thread) would only be intelligible (or interesting) to a computer scientist. I much prefer going on the journey with you, where I can witness your 'aha's or 'woo hoo's and 'aw shoot's along the path of a poem. I'd love to play more with that process-to-product dichotomy and display this year—you're right, there's something intriguing in there (the Mystery! part of your titular triumvirate) that feels fresh in the age of Ai. Might have potential for a new wave of poetry ("Process Poetry"? Needs workshopping).

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