Word Cutters

Oh, April. We wrote about you in class today, and yellow. We read T. S. Eliot:

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land

“The Wasteland”

and Ali Smith:

April.

It teaches us everything.

Spring

and Bernadette Mayer:

Another gray Sunday. Trees turn brownish. We’ll think of yellow.

“April 27,” from Works & Days

I once attended a workshop with Norman Fisher, the Zen priest and poet, in which he gave us a list of words (“acacia, ankles, arguments, asparagus,” the list began; “elegant, end,” the list ended) and the instruction to use each of the words as we wrote for 8 minutes. “No matter what happens, continue to write,” he said.

“Making meaning is not my concern,” he added. “The words are smarter than me.”

He’d been working, he said, “with this particular list of words for more than two decades.”

What do you make of this?

Gather a list of words for yourself. (How will you choose them?) Cut them up. Bag them. Use them.