A Poem Being Born



So I've always wanted to do this, record a new poem being typed out from my mind to paper--well, in this case, from mind to computer.

I found this website called Fuzzmail that does just that, it records whatever you type in the message and when you send it to someone they can see your entire message from start to finish---including typos you fixed, what you deleted, what you changed, what you moved around.

I decided to do this for you for the last day of National Poetry Month and NaPoWriMo.

Let me set the scene, it's 7:45 am when I begin. I put on one of my favorite bands to have playing in the background while I write (The Fray), and I decide to use one of Susan Rich's opening lines from The Alchemist's Kitchen for a starting prompt.

I used the line, "She will be known as the Michelangelo" from her poem, "Tender."

To see the results and the poem being typed out on the page in real time (though thankfully, you can speed it up - just press the "faster" button), follow this link to Fuzzmail.

Some things to note-- This ended up being a longer poem than I thought, so near the end you will have to use the scroll on the right to scroll down to see what I'm writing.  Sorry about that.

I write out the poem then return to quickly to the top of the page to revise and add/fix stanza and line breaks.

Also, much of this poem is stream-of-consciousness.  In other poems, I go back and revise while writing, but this poem has a lot of moving forwardness that may not true of all my poems.

Let me know what you think.  I might try this again setting the timer to exactly 5 minutes and stopping right when it goes off.

P.S.  I don't consider this poem as done or finished, but just as a first draft I can now revise in my own time.

Comments

  1. I loved this! So much fun, and also fascinating to "watch" how you're thinking and then making line breaks, etc. I'll have to check out Fuzzmail. I wasn't aware of it until now.

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  2. Thanks, Maureen. I just discovered it this morning. I've been waiting to record myself typing a poem from start to finish, but wasn't sure how to go about it. I was thinking of downloading software then found this nifty website (thanks, Google!)

    Anyway, it's pretty intriguing to me.

    Thanks for your note.

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  3. Kelli,
    Love this poem, and especially love (what came to be) the last line.

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  4. (Fake)Sigh. Looks like the laundry isn't going to get folded, after all. Love this site. Thank you for rescuing me from laundry.

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  5. That is incredible, I loved seeing the process...loved watching the changes, and the final product, beautiful

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