Disintegrating Poems
Rob A. Mackenzie:
"A few weeks ago, Helena Nelson sent me a link telling the story of a poetry reading. This, however, was no ordinary reading. The idea is that, without telling the audience the nature of the event, you write a batch of poems over a few months – the very best you can do, nothing dashed off or obviously ephemeral. Once you’ve read them, you tear them all up. No other copies can exist and you have to delete them from your hard drive before performing them. In other words, the performance is a one-off experience, never to be repeated..."
4 comments:
At 5:33 PM,Wow, this inspires panic. That's somewhat sad, that I'd feel panicked about doing this...
The great computer crash of '03 (as I like to call it) took many many MANY of my poems (and other things), and it was not a pleasant experience. But then again, I couldn't control the deletions.
Very intriguing.
At 3:25 PM,
I had the same reaction.
At 11:36 PM,
But surely if the poems were any good, the poet at least would remember them? If not, it must surely be the poet who is disintegrating...
At 10:34 AM,
Fair point, Jonathan. :-)
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