i'm in a workshop and that's why i've been "bogarting" so much, lately lol. it's cave canem's first ever regional workshop in minneapolis and ive got really dope classmates! here's a poem i wrote, and a reflection after the first session last night. it's a sonnet! my first ever!! so im very excited and nervous to share with y'all. because it’s a prayer and I’ve been trying to relearn how to pray with my poems. Ghazals have helped me do that. But I’ve stayed away from sonnets.
i first saw a danez smith show in Madison, Wi during Ali Muldrow’s campaign for teacher board in the late 10’s. It was an intimate show and i was there alone, and it was such a tender fire that danez performed with.
i try to remember the tenderness of fire when i write my poems because of that danez smith show. And i wrote this poem last night as homework because danez asked us to write markov sonnets or something like that. inspired by the Markov Chain. Which basically means there’s a lot of intentional repetion.
i like the rhythm of repetion, and how we can refrain from saying everything and that everything is already in the refrain.
i know a lot about being refrained.
and needing to return. And having to reframe
what you turned from, for your own sanity. and returning
to the poem,
This poem is a sonnet. That i’m reframing as a prayer, but the refrains are very personal to my life.
is it bogarting? idk. in this workshop at the end of the 5 weeks we are supposed to invent a new form. i already know that for me that form is “bogarting” but i am tryna figure out what “bogarting” as a poetic device is and can be, with constraints. i know i want creative freedom. but what kind of constraints do i like? refrain, paying homage, and breaking rules, and asserting self over and against other conceptions of who the self is. an erotic invitation to un-other ourselves. to take back what was taken from us. this is what i’m trying to do when i bogart. this sonnet bogarts because it’s a markov sonnet, kinda. the “Now.” is not part of a stanza, which is supposed to tell the reader many things.
thank you for reading this far, dear reader, and now i ask again, what “Now.”?
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