Rituals for Jess

 Jess, I hope you can get some downtime this weekend!

I wanted to share another writing ritual. This one involves using voice to text with a phone. I like to talk into Google docs to save my work.

In my car as fast as I could, I started saying whatever I saw, but used the words "in conjunction with" to stitch together my speaking. I also riffed off of what I was saying, naturally transitioning to another thing I saw or thought of.

I'll include the example below, but I was able to continue speaking as fast as I could for about 10 minutes and then I was exhausted.

But here's a sample of what came out. Maybe a way to think about this ritual for your own writing?

All Best,

Dennis

Oh I forgot to add, think of this not as writing a poem but generating words that will eventually become a poem. That you can print this out and use a highlighter to look for different word connections and then create a poem out of that.

Stillness being able to know and determine by listening to the heart and conjunction with the heart itself in conjunction with what the heart wants to tell us in conjunction with everything that the Dairy Queen has for treats and conjunction with going to the Dairy Queen as in walking down to the Dairy Queen to get yourself a treat and conjunction with what the actual ice cream is that you're eating that is milk in conjunction with whatever is bad and whatever you're eating in conjunction with the happy memory and conjunction with whatever isn't good in conjunction with lemonade sedans sold by children trying to get some money in conjunction with the actual lemonade made in conjunction with how children make lemonade with their hands in conjunction with if it's a mix or with actual lemons in conjunction with what children's understand about mass produced lemonade on the grocery store

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Re: Poetry Journal

DJ

Dennis Etzel Jr

To:

Jess Seidel

Sat 8/26/2023 8:16 AM

Jess,

Thank you so much for reaching out! Yes, I would love to share many of these rituals I have developed as well as carry forward after my time at Naropa.

I will start the conversation on Monday!

For this weekend, if you can find a place to sit outside and write as fast as you can for five minutes with these two anchoring words—AUGUST and WAVE. You can write these words down when you get stuck and keep going.

Also, when you get stuck, smell coffee beans.

Another project: Take a poem you love, think of a place you love, think of an experience you had in that place, then start writing. When stuck, grab a word from the poem (I start from the bottom up), write it down, and keep writing. Keep borrowing whatever word you find. I call this a write-through.