Making Something Out of Nothing
A Poetic Method and a Free Book
A collage, as the one above, is the perfect example of making something out of nothing. It involves collecting images or objects or phrases, or whatever, and trusting in one’s imagination to put them together.
Consider one of of Joseph Cornell’s boxes:
Cornell scoured the streets of New York to collect objects that he then arranged as he saw fit. What I find interesting about all this is Cornell’s process, It begins with him walking about waiting for objects call out to him. Then comes the gathering. Next, the reliance on his intuition to choose objects that he feels relate to each. Finally, he has to rely on both his intuition and intellect to arrange them, after which he must construct the actual boxes and give a name to them.
I like to think Cornell didn’t have a name or theme chosen in advance, and when I’ve asked my students to create their own boxes, I’ve encouraged them not to do that. To do so, destroys the joy and spontaneity of invention. I want them to give up themselves to the real and imaginary histories of their objects.
It wasn’t until I finished a book of fragments called Observations from the Edge of the Abyss that I realized that my “method” mirrored Cornell’s. I explain how this process works in the introduction to the book, which you can get as a free pdf at Observations from the Edge of the Abyss (it already has been downloaded over 600 times), and I encourage you to share the book with others.
My publisher at MadHat Press, Marc Vincenz, has graciously allowed me to offer it for free until he publishes it in early spring in paperback, after which I will take it off my college site. Marc feels that readers will enjoy the PDF so much that they will purchase the book.
Below is an excerpt from Part 2. All of the poems in this book began as fragments I collected over the years, which then, relying on my intuition, I juxtaposed in my own verbal boxes, allowing those fragments to play off each other and lead me to different narrative strategies, which themselves developed into little stories. Much to my surprise, characters and patterns emerged, driven by my own lifelong preoccupations and obsessions. You can read more about this process in my intro.
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A black carriage trudging through the mud of Time. “I am a star visible only to the blind,” I say to Astra. “I am a smudged fingerprint left on the disgraced priest’s abandoned chalice.” “Was I really named after an extinct constellation?” she asks—a question followed by a fevered twittering of tiny birds. What a spectacle! One of those undocumented moments, which some addle-brained ornithologist would most certainly designate “prophetic.”
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Would The Odyssey have been written if Homer had never existed? Certainly, there are no heroes in my neighborhood, just a bunch of angry white guys in pickup trucks with nothing to pick up, continually enraged that their wives are no longer virgins. “Most people are no more than background characters on a movie set made of cardboard,” my friend Art says—a metaphor we schedule for dissection at our next “How and When Not To Explain the Unexplainable” session—a by-invitation-only affair.
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A man with ear plugs shoved up both nostrils and a mouth sewn shut by fear. It has something to do with Spiritus Vitae, but we have no clues to cling to, except that he is following a celestial fiat dictated by a defrocked monk a millennium before he’d been born. “Like a frozen stream harboring little anxious sailboats,” is how the man describes himself, as he gazes into a starless sky, pressing a plastic statue of a beardless second-class saint close to his heart.
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A theory about the existence of God that Art recorded in a hundred-page treatise of ten-beat rhyming couplets, which might have changed the world if someone had taken the time to read it, or realized that it would have been better all-around if poets had just stopped with the fancy metaphors and admitted, once and for all, that everyone involved had shit for brains.
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I’ve known of guys who have beaten their wives silly, guys who swore they spent five days on Mars with Charlize Theron—this in a town where letting the air out of the tires of cop cars is considered a big deal. I tell you, if a Horn of Plenty actually exists, I plan to blow hard on it until the world becomes nothing more than a celestial drawing of parallel circles, overlapping just enough to silence the broken symphony playing inside my head.
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A prisoner in solitary confinement fed caviar and champagne under the premise that you can make anyone believe in an illusion. I could say, “The clock on the prison wall has no hands,” but that’s what you are expecting. All he cares about is the memory of his grandmother’s flour-stained apron, along with the spectacle of rising bread and the taste of warm butter on his childhood lips. Outside his cell, a circle of rosy-cheeked, fledgling nuns sit on wooden chairs, knitting him a blood-red scarf while sharing stories of their erotic visions.
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“I can’t fix a sink or mend a fence, and don’t call me if your gutters fall off. I keep it simple: let the dog out, irrigate my sinuses, lock my kid in the woodshed for a few hours, so he doesn’t get uppity. I control things and will never bow before logic.” This said by a man I met in a fancy hotel that may or may not exist. All I had wanted was a cup of tea and a piece of rye bread soaked in raspberry jam. The night manager was ranting about a rowdy klatch of clowns abandoned by the circus because of their inability to make people laugh. “A pack of pirates,” the night manager said, referring to the ruckus upstairs. “A multitude of goons.”
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What to make of a pair of abandoned Jordans that no one claimed for fear they might tell the sad story of a family gone bad. Like the day my neighbor called me a “latent itinerant” at 6 a.m. on a beautiful morning when even the pine trees appeared to be painted on the horizon. It’s times like these when I miss those days of fly swatters, 104-degree fevers, and snowstorms that could bring you to your knees. Days where I would research the etymologies of words like “coconut,” while my father tracked down our exotic prodigal parakeet, appropriately named Pretty Girl.
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A coffee shop, charcoal renditions of unknown, uncared about, unpatroned artists gazing down like gargoyles from the top of a plaster wall, happy in their anonymity. “This is the history of art for art’s sake,” Art says, nibbling on his sushi, unaware this isn’t a bring-your-own-sushi kind of place. “How prescient,” I reply, having no idea what that means. Outside, I look to the sky for consolation: “Foolish Man,” “Narcissist,” “Phony Baloney,” “Hack.” Who is this skywriter to whom so much wisdom has been given?
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss
Yes, Miracles & Mortifications was a complete shift for me. My first book, though I'm fond of it relies heavily on early influences, but with Miracles I needed an improvisational style that allowed me to juxtapose, move quickly, and play with language (sometimes making up words), so I let it rip, and then went back revised each prose poem at least 40 times. It was an exhilarating experience.
Peter: your ‘Cornell’ methodology, though I’d never considered that likening. Is just right. Sometimes, when stalled, I will start reading something - no matter what- and jotting down ten words that catch my eye: then the poem consists of putting them together to make some sort of unpredicted whole. Great read here!