Conceptual Poetics

Last night, a friend and I hauled a fifty-gallon bin out into the snow. We dumped little bits of wood with words on them into the water and arranged them there to freeze overnight. As a finishing touch, we used broken sticks to spell "Mix Me Up" in snow banked up against the side of the bin.

This is, apparently, a Poem.

Our partner, Rene, is putting more of the same wooden blocks on tables and windowsills in our library cafe. He is also including markers so that the audience, forced to interact with the blocks -- moving them aside, accidentally knocking them over, idly stacking them -- can also become a participant. 

This is also a Poem.

Today, we're setting up three aquaria in her basement with powerful little mag-lites in them. Every day we are going to collaborate on texts derived from my favorite phrase, "immanentize the eschaton," and scrawl a little more of them on the glass with dry-erase marker, creating linguistic shadow puppets.

You guessed it. I'm told it's a Poem.

Together, these three Poems make a Poetry Installation. Who knew?

For a more serious look at the Underlying Concept of the Poetry Installation, check here.