Poetics of Community Engagement

May Term 2014

Poem Prompt Four (4)

In Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies, Jenny
Edbauer radically reconsiders rhetorical situation, arguing that rhetorical ecologies are already
spatially, affectively, and conceptually in practice. Further explaining, she quotes Eberly: rhetoric
matters because rhetoricwhich demands engagement with the livingis the process through which
texts are not only produced but also understood to matter. She then concludes:

*t+his mattering is not fully explained only by a texts elemental properties, but also in
the sense of material effects and processes. When we approach a rhetoric that does
indeed engage with the living, hooking into the processes that are already in play, then
we find ourselves theorizing about rhetorical publicness. We find ourselves engaging in
public rhetoric whose power is not circumscribed or delimited. We encounter rhetoric.
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Poets, especially urban poets, have frequently explored the notions of public rhetoric and the encounter
of rhetoric. For many of them, poetry itself is the flow and change of language as an encountera
contactbetween people and the words they use to interact, move about, and therefore shape the
cityscape by acts of metaphor. The poems below exhibit characteristic moves of this experience; they
record and interpret on the fly, weaving bits of conversation and image together to create the space of
flow and contact between ideas and object (human and non-human), developing a strong sense of the
familiarity and exhilaration of wandering through not just the physical places but what Edbauer calls the
rhetorical ecologies that include all the events and interactions that possibly occur and the enacted
changes of language and its meaning accreted over time (Shaviro qtd. in Edbauer 9).

Our chalking experiment and the guide we are producing with the LASC are primary examples of texts
that are intended to live on as public discourse and to reemerge constantly over time, changing in
context, application, meaning, and effect. Another way to connect to this process is through poetry.
Write a poem that renders your experience wandering through and interpreting language as it emerges
in a context (or multiple contexts) and changes over time. Follow these steps:

Step One

Read two of the three poems below before you start to write. They are good models to follow:

Frank OHara The Day Lady Died http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171368
Robert Pinsky City Elegies http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177960
Jake Adam York City of Grace http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246642

Step Two

Choose one of these three options as the prompt to which you will respond:

Wander for several hours all at once a single, urban place. Record what you hear, see, taste,
smell, and feel (texture) in a notepad or on an electronic device. Focus on the flow and change
of rhetoric (e.g. spoken, written, or otherwise discernable/ patterned, as in the actual changes
you notice in the position of objects, the people who come and go, kinds of people who enter
the space and what they say or how they interact with each other and with you, etc.). Arrange
your observations (e.g. snippets of conversation, sounds, images, etc.) into a poem that
demonstrates your interpretation of the flow of rhetoric accreting over time. How do things
change from the start of your experience until the end? What messages or meanings seem
constant and which change? How does this affect the space (and you)?

At many different times of the day (with a total of several hours), wander a single, urban place.
Record what you hear, see, taste, smell, and feel (texture) in a notepad or on an electronic
device. Focus on the flow and change of rhetoric (e.g. spoken, written, or otherwise
discernable/ patterned, as in the actual changes you notice in the position of objects, the people
who come and go, kinds of people who enter the space and what they say or how they interact
with each other and with you, etc.). Arrange your observations (e.g. snippets of conversation,
sounds, images, etc.) into a poem that demonstrates your interpretation of the flow of rhetoric
accreting over time. How do things change from the start of your experience until the end?
What messages or meanings seem constant and which change? How does this affect the space
(and you)?

Wander for several hours a variety of urban places. Record what you hear, see, taste, smell, and
feel (texture) in a notepad or on an electronic device. Focus on the flow and change of rhetoric
(e.g. spoken, written, or otherwise discernable/patterned, as in the actual changes you notice in
the position of objects, the people who come and go, kinds of people who enter the spaces and
what they say or how they interact with each other and with you, etc.). Arrange your
observations (e.g. snippets of conversation, sounds, images, etc.) into a poem that
demonstrates your interpretation of the flow of rhetoric accreting over time. How do things
change from the start of your experience until the end? What messages or meanings seem
constant and which change? How does this affect the spaces (and you)?