Topeka Trance-'Cryption Poetry Project #4

Topeka Trance-'Cryption Poetry Project #4
for Joe Harrington

Put your team's baseball cap on. Plan to write during the evening game, and to have it on the radio. Better a transistor, but even a phone with an app for listening will do. Begin deep breathing. If you find your mind wants to start the poem, write the envoi.

Several things will happen during this project: Your love for listening to baseball, your love for the language used for the game, your love for writing, all of the emotions you have about each combined in this moment of meditation.

Think of this as a meditation in the way you write poems. You will write slow while listening to the game. You will listen for those words that come in your mind. If you love writing fast, write fast only when you are following your own path away from what is said.

Begin writing as soon as you hear the sportscasters give whatever wording it is that signals that the game has started.

Keep in mind that sportscasters speak fast as you will stay meditative. Write the words that resonate with you as you hear them. However, be ready to continue with the other words that follow what you have written. Stay in that moment until you are "stuck". Go back to the game and continue.

Write until you are finished.

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What is Trance-'Cryption? It is where transcription, trance poetics, and encryption meet.

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The idea for this came from how many poets are baseball fans. Joe, Susan M. Schultz, and so on.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/244646

Ron Silliman? Anselm Berrigan and Bethlehem Shoals? Yes!

I wanted this project to reflect these poets' sentiments about baseball and poetry. Plus, I wanted to honor my friend.

I am fascinated with sports talk. Listening to a ball game is unique, in that almost all sportscasters sound the same, use the same rhetoric, and such. However, there is a lot said that goes outside of what happens in the game.

I also wanted a poet's aesthetic to come into play, that going into that poetic trance for writing should be the main goal--the thing privileged.

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My poem coming soon.