| abstract | How Not to Pack a Suitcase is a collection of prose poems appropriated from Warriner's English Grammar and Composition:
Third Course. All of the language in the collection is taken from Warriner's and appears in exactly the same order. However, most of John Warriner's text has
been removed. The resulting poems are poems of erasure. In choosing a text about rules of grammar and then literally breaking the text apart by following a set of my
own rules about titles and punctuation, as well as sequencing, I worked to question the efficacy of language in providing insight into the ineffable. The poems also
include a narrative thread in which the speaker navigates through the terminal illness of her mother. The collection thus challenges not only accepted rules of and
assumptions about language and poetry but also the idea that we are able to control our lives.
The seven part introductory essay traces the process of writing the book, citing research into several poets' choices to write either formal or prose poetry before
moving into a study of conceptual poetry, and, in particular, poetry of appropriation. The essay places How Not to Pack a Suitcase in conversation with poets
of all these different types of poetry but in particular with the work of M. NourbeSe Philip, Juliana Spahr, Sarah Vap, Charles Reznikoff, Kimiko Hahn, and Claudia
Rankine. As I trace my writing process, I discuss the influence of these poets' work on my own choices.
Ultimately, both the introductory essay and the collection of poems are explorations into the paradoxical ways in which poetry transcends the limitations of language
by simultaneously creating and bridging space between the writer and the reader. |
