Ridding my poetry of the explanatory “becausing” consists of using my backspace button often. I’m not sure where the style came from, but I often use a lofty and archaic diction in my poetry. I don’t aim to sound Victorian, nor do I aim to sound contemporary and modern, but I definitely like the rhythm of my poetry once I remove “because,” “since,” “whereas,” and the like. Though I like the way “thus” sounds, the word is nothing more than an ornament. Aside from rhythm, it brings nothing to my writing. I am sacrificing those words while trying to find other words in order to maintain the same rhythm. The goal of workshop for me is ridding my work of words that merely take up space. There is a different between my poetry and my literary criticism, so I need to put more effort into making that contrast apparent. I find that my poetry hits harder when I remove “is like” and qualifiers that I use out of comfort. I never use qualifiers out of purpose or intent. Basically, I need to become more aware of how I write and the words I use.
Script Folio 43 Split pomegranate, common rhinoceros beetle, Scarlet Turks='s cap lily folding back it's red lips while anthers circle the pistil's one hand: above them six lines are written in chancery script with lettere tagliate , letters cut like the long lines of pasta our parents cut on our plate, the work of two people who never met. The two halves of each letter--below and above-- are severed or sewn together by inked chain links like those that knot a fence or a stitch that unravels the whole length of a sentence if a stray thread is pulled--chain letter, chain gang, chain mail, chain saw-- or those paper links that wrap themselves around the Xmas tree: eentsy weentsy spider sidling up to each letter, each word, casting and binding in silk as if to ravel and unravel once felt the same. ---------------------------- Food Foods were eaten like the grossness our parents turned into freedom tickets away from the kitchen table, the alteration of rules we didn’t know exis...
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