Let's Dance

I'm sorry that I've neglected (our collaborative nested meditation). I believe it still has potential to dance a bit more, and I'd like to revive it. Please check out the original post for rules and instructions for contributions.

If you recall, we finished a first stanza and began a second. Here's where we left off:

Let’s dance.

Let’s dance
without thinking.

Let’s dance
without thinking
about the past.

Let’s dance
without thinking
about the past,
the bitter taste of ashes.

Let’s dance
without thinking
about the past.
The bitter taste of ashes
would smother our burning tango.

Let's fly.

Let's Dance

Are you ready to collaborate again?

After serious consideration of number of collaborative forms, I’ve decided that it would be fun to try a collaborative nested meditation. Easy to explain (Geoff already has), and I think that the shift of voice in each stanza will add breadth to the poem at the same time that each additional line adds depth.

To review:

• The poem starts with a single line stanza that is a complete sentence. (I’ll provide the first stanza.)
  
• Each successive stanza repeats the previous stanza and adds one more line that changes the meaning. Every stanza must be a complete sentence or multiple sentences.
  
• The words from previous lines cannot be changed. The word order of previous lines cannot be changed. No exceptions.
  
• Capitalization and punctuation of previous lines can be changed.

Each collaborator will add a complete additional stanza. You may add as many stanzas to the poem as you like, but please do not add two successive stanzas.

There’s no limit to the final length of the poem. I’ll declare the poem complete if there’s been no activity for one month.

As we did with the sestina, please cut and past the entire poem into your comment whenever you add a stanza.

I personally don’t care about subject matter. Meditate or not as you see fit.

OK. I’ll steal a line from David Bowie (no, not from Miley Cyrus) to get us started:

Let’s dance.

Forms: Nested Meditation

One of the “Sleepless in Alliance" overnight poem contests at Ohio Poetry Day introduced me to a poetic form I hadn't previously heard of, the "nested meditation". The nested meditation was invented by an Ohioan, Kevin Anderson (no, not Kevin J. Anderson the SF writer; Keven Anderson the poet and psychologist working in Toledo), who has 76 of them in his book Divinity in Disguise, 2003. (The title is from a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, "Every human being is a divinity in disguise.)

Since then (thanks, google) it's a form that seems to have been picked up by a number of other poets.

Here's a example from Anderson's book:

Do you have the time?

Do you have the time

of your life?

Do you have the time

of your life

or does someone else perhaps?

Do you have the time

of your life

or does someone else? Perhaps

it's later than you think.

Anderson gives the rules of the form in the appendix to Divinity in Disguise, and there are a number of versions elsewhere on the web. In brief, the rules are:

• The first stanza is a single line that, by itself, forms a complete sentence


• Each additional stanza adds repeats the previous one, then adds a single additional line, one which changes the meaning of the piece, so that the stanza, with all the lines read together, still reads as a complete sentence. (Or several complete sentences).


• Punctuation can be changed in a line from one stanza to the next, but not words or word order*


• Repeat for as many lines as desired.

Done well, each stanza mutates the sense of the previous sentence, changing or even reversing the meaning.
The examples I find scrolling around on the web are, indeed, mostly spiritual in nature, some religious, some meditations about the natural world, some elegies, but all of them more or less meditations, following the pattern Anderson had originally set. Here's one by Sharon Rollins (from Dangerous Love, 2006):

We Can't

We can’t.

We can’t go on living.

We can’t go on living as if nothing has happened.

We can’t go on living as if nothing has happened. War, hunger, despair must be faced.

We can’t go on living as if nothing has happened. War, hunger, despair must be faced with peace, justice, and love.


But the form seems to be one that would be open to other types of content-- a clever poet could, I think, write a quite nice little narrative poem in the form. (Perhaps we'd need a new word for the form when it's not a meditation: one might call it a "nested progression" instead of a "nested meditation" when such works are not meditations)

So, here's my "nested progression" for you, a special for Hallowe'en:

I am.

I am

thirsty.

I am

thirsty

for your love.

I am

thirsty

for your lovely

blood.

I am

thirsty

for your lovely

blood

and you have not barred the door.

Happy Hallowe'en!


--
*In Anderson's rules, he also says that you shouldn't use homophones to mutate the meaning-- changing "there" to "they're" would be a rule-breaker. But then he admits that he sometimes does it himself. So it may be a flaw, but not a fatal flaw.