The Apostrophe Blog
It is received wisdom that writing is a solitary act requiring hours of alone time with paper and pen, or keyboard and screen. But many writers, particularly poets, often work together on projects.
A while back, a poetry pal and I worked a collaborative project we christened Odes of Opposition. We wanted to copy the hand of the masters, those poetic stars fixed into the contemporary, literary discourse. We wanted to thumb our noses at them, oppose them word-for-word charting our own course. We wanted to read critically. And write creatively. All at once. Again, then again.
When we started this project, Lisa McCool-Grime and I had been working in a “poetry partnership” for several years. So collaborating on this Odes of Opposition project came quite naturally for us. After “meeting” in an on-line class via Writers on the Net, we established a comfortable and compatible process for sharing our work-in-progress for critique. This back-and-forth included everything from the big-picture rough-draft feedback to the nitpicking of words, syllables, and sounds as a poem inched closer toward done to glowing, page-long annotations on our current poetry loves. Odes of Opposition extended many of these skills and conversations we’d privately built between us into the public forum.
Over time, we worked on our individual oppositions to a single poem we’d selected from the work of a lengthy list of legendary poets including John Berryman; Elizabeth Bishop; Gwendolyn Brooks; Allen Ginsberg; Frank O’Hara; Kenneth Rexroth; Anne Sexton; Wallace Stevens; Jean Toomer; and James Wright. Then we would write an additional opposition to the work each of us had done, yielding up more scraps of syntactical surprise and linguistic wordplay. Even now, over a decade later, I still find myself mining the language generated by this project for my ongoing creative work!
And three sets of our oppositions got published! Our oppositions to Sylvia Plath and William Carlos Williams were published in the Imitation Issue of qarrtsiluni in February 2012. Our oppositions to Langston Hughes and Gertrude Stein appeared in PANK’s Queer Two issue, November 2011. And our oppositions to Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were published in the Collaborative Issue of Poemeleon, Winter/Spring 2010.
For some reason the link to the PANK oppositions is not working so here is my opposition to Stein:
6.13 / Queer Two
From Odes of Opposition
Nancy Flynn and Lisa McCool-Grime
Gertrude Stein’s Objects
Nancy Opposes Gertrude
EVERYTHING ORDINARY.
A fact a single fact was certain. Then the said did fall and where was a fence inside it, then outside was sent out and here people stayed when doubtfully nothing was lowdown. It was frivolous.
A SAID SUN.
A pale, a slightly pale sun, an ever pale sun was lovely exceptionally, it was such lovely despite having much said on it. When said was on nothing it was ever essential. Was this yet an agreement for every save of it and because of where every person who was sicker, was here every person who had so little withdrawn.
A CAREFREE SKIRT.
A carefree skirt was followed, followed behind, followed and followed behind, that was the general dolor that was saved by that width and not every length yes ever less than a mirror.
FIRE BURNING.
Fire disappointing and easy all apart ruins a forest and a flop.
A NO. 2 PENCIL.
A dark flush, a glory, a lead spread, a sallow fact.
A SILENCE.
Field mouse untouched by salty and significant chips and swallows no screws and careful careful, that was that.
A SHAN’T.
A shan’t was a shoe and joy and a said plummet and an over skirt and a truster a truster for walks.
A shan’t was a rending, a pie of wane a leviathan mind. A shan’t.
Scatter a refusal, scatter it on familiar scales and by mountains. There is solid solid loss, a loss was a shan’t.
A copy that hadn’t a considerable hobble, few of them, or so.
Thank a square it was refusal.
It is a truth to list how a cry and a middle and a woven fall and a destination and a destroyer and considerable rejecting was by no means it.
::
Lisa Opposes Nancy
NO ONE NOVEL.
The fancy the many fancies are unsure. When a question does rise but there is the field outside them, when inside is brought in but where spirits moved then surely everyone is uplifted. They are necessary.
THE QUESTIONED MOON.
The gay, the very gay moon, the never gay moon is homely commonly, one is less homely for taking few questions to one. Then questions are to everyone one is never spare. Is that now the argument from each loss of one or in spite of when each spirit that is better, is there each spirit that lacked hardly much outgoing.
THE SERIOUS BLOUSE.
The serious blouse is led, led ahead, led and led ahead, this is a specific glee this is lost to this length or just each width no never more as the window.
WATER DROWNING.
Water supporting but difficult part together heals the clearcut or the spring.
THE LETTER Z PEN.
The light sallow, the shame, the ink pooled, the flushed fancy.
THE NOISE.
Fence owl grabbed at sweet but sorry cake but spits all nails but hurry hurry this is this.
THE SHELL.
The shell is the hat or despair or the questioned soar or the under blouse or the cynic the cynic of stands.
The shell is the mending, the cake of wax the diminutive spirit. The shell.
Gather the embrace, gather them by foreign slides or on plains. Here was gaseous gaseous gain, the gain is the shell.
The model this lacks the faint march, many for it, and no.
Welcome the circle they are embrace.
They are the lie to check why the laugh or the ends or the unraveled rise or the journey or the creator or faint accepting is for anyways them.
My opposition of Sylvia Plath, “He’s,” evolved into the poem, “Apron Strings” which was published in my 2015 poetry collection, Every Door Recklessly Ajar.
APRON STRINGS
He grew restless as a wasp,
her sticklike Adonis,
her homeboy spawn.
One more reedy lope
headed for sea
like a gull on a brining tug.
His magic-touch palm
became beggar’s bowl,
sunbeamed and filled
with a wish.
How she wanted
to follow his light
as fireflies will
but forced herself to still,
a water jar of lotus,
no backwash, no swell.
Closer once
than the heartbeat’s pulse.
Precise as a scar
now overlooked like rain.
All used chalk
and his owed mask off.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
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