How It Begins for Me

Before International Pwoermd Writing Month began, I started making a list of types of pwoermds I would be writing each day of this month. I made the stakes hard for myself. Last year was the tenth InterNaPwoWriMo, so I had ten tasks. Since this is the eleventh, I have eleven tasks--and this little essay constitutes the eleventh and final task of the day.

I'm continuing my process from last year, and keeping track of my daily pwoermds on forms I've prepared, so as to ensure that I don't forget a task. But I also make it a little more difficult for myself by deciding (only yesterday) that I would keep track of the creation of my pwoermds in reach time, within the covers of a little rose-colored notebook I bought yesterday. Also, I'm requiring myself to write longer essays about pwoermds, and I'm going to produce a good list of participants--the latter, just not tonight.

In my booklet, I am documenting all the pwoermds I create, along with the time and location of their creation. This booklet is a little pwoermd diary for this month. But what if I make this a daily practice. Will I survive?

Anyway, here are my eleven tasks, to provide a sense of my plans:

1. Environmental Pwoermd

I have to make at least one pwoermd a day that is set out in an environment, that gains meaning by being in a certain setting. Today's pwoermd I set up by a tufting of crocuses in Battery Park, just across the street from my apartment. First, I toured the park to find something to inspire a pwoermd, then I went home wrote the pwoermd down, returned to the park to set it in place, and documented that setting in place.

2. Foreign Language Pwoermd

Each day, I have to write a poem in a language other than English. Today, the language was French, probably because I know it relatively well and because it's a good language for pwoermds. I've written pwoermds in at least three other languages besides English and French, so we'll see what I can make happen with other languages later.

3. Found Pwoermd

I don't know why I have kept this form in the list, since it's a little unnerving to try to find a pwoermd every day. Not make one but FIND one. I have a trick up my sleeve, however, so I should be okay. Today, I heard this pwoermd, a weird mispronunciation-as-portmanteau during the television show "Meet the Press," so I moved this off my list (or onto it?) quickly today.

4. Handwritten Visual Pwoermd

Today is Sunday, and Easter, and April Fool's Day, and the second day of Passover, which is to say I had more time than I would during the week. With this time, I spent maybe an hour making a large handwritten visual pwoermd in pencil. I'll probably confine myself to simpler achievements for the rest of the week.

5. Object Pwoermd

Before this month had even begun, I had collected and even boxed the objects I planned to turn into object pwoermds, so I'm ahead of schedule here. I found a box with seven pieces of glass and made six object pwoermds out of them.

6. Photopwoermd

Even though I take photographs all the time, I had to decide to take a photograph I thought I'd find someway to turn into a photopwoermd--because the rest of my photos were of brunch with Karen or simply of the pwoermds I'd created today.

7. Pwoermd Essay

You're reading that (fairly weak attempt) right now.

8. Pwoermdbottle III

This is the third year of this project, where I write all the transcribeable pwoermds only small lozenges of white cardboard and load them into a bottle (always an empty bottle once holding Barr Hill gin). I like watching the bottle slowly fill.

9. Soundpwoermd

This is an easy pwoermd to make. I'm good at glossolalia, so I just stop myself after a few syllables and call it a soundpwoermd (an aural pwoermd). This year (well, at least today), I made it harder but forcing myself to transcribe the pwoermd into the International Phonetic Alphabets--so let's hope I accurately identified the click I used to end the pwoermd.

10. Textual Pwoermd

I usually make at least one of these a day, so these are not hard for me. I even created one ("countercountenances") early this morning before I had gone to bed. I did four of these non-visual pwoermds today.

11. Wildcard Pwoermd

I made this one loose, so that it could include any kind of pwoermd I had not made over the course of the day. Today's was a pwoermdkname for my friend mIEKAL aND. I realized as I was writing this that I didn't write an icepwoermd today, so I stopped to create "ghust," which is almost my email i.d., but which is really a strong gust. I took the picture of it in the dark, so that the flashing of the flash would be a gust of light.

With that, I'm almost done. All I have to do is update the pwoermdbottle and post evidence of "ghust," because distributing evidence is a big part of this project.

pw(o'er)md

Firmly

Geof Huth, shell pwoermds (29 April 2017)

The month is nearly over, yet the pwoermds won't be. I likely won't write at least one object pwoermd a month, but I'll still make pwoermds. I am trapped in a cycle, more a cycling, a process, a movement, a sinkhole. I am moving through the word every day, lost in language's ability to give up sense to us and to give up on sense, trapped in the punful life, too much of language to live without its play, ingrained with language, dipped in the baptismal waters, yet never brought back up. I am firmly of the word, unitary but not uniform; the pun, multitudinous and confusible; and the pwoermd, ordinary and revelatory. There is no way out.

pw(o'er)md

Funning

Geof Huth, "MENTUM" (28 April 2017)

Earlier this week, a friend said he questioned the value of my pwoermds because they were nothing more than ironic puns. Nothing wrong with that criticism. Tho my pwoermds are not always puns.

I reminded him of an important quotation by me about pwoermds: The pun is the highest from of literature.

I stand by that point.

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Friends

Karen and I had our first party at our apartment today, and I didn't even mention pwoermds. Our company was law librarians from across the state who work in the court system, and we had a fabulous (as Karen might say) time.

I did, however, introduce them to a little of my poetry. And I even gave one of them a little book of pwoermds of mine from 1987: the stanes. This consist of a little sued me pouch with drawstring (all sewed by me) holding three stones, each written with a different pwoermd, based on the type of stone it was.

The reader didn't comment on the pouch's contents after reading it. But that's okay. My goal isn't acceptance, and certainly not embracement. My goal is exposure.

I try to make the gears of people's brains roll. Simply that.

pw(o’er)md

Frozen

Geof Huth, "norishmeant" (26 April 2017)

I am writing with ice this month. I haven't done this before this month because I didn't have the tools. Now I do: ice cube trays with holes the shapes of each letter of the alphabet.

While working with these icy letters, I assemble each word, each pwoermd, on a different surface than any previous ice pwoermd. There are two reasons for this. First, I'm interested in providing variety, especially when I'm making the same kinds of pwoermds over and over again. Second, a new surface is a new source of inspiration. This is especially important for my object pwoermds—of which icepwoermds are one type—because these are Adamic works that rename the surfaces and objects they are laid upon.

What I love about making these pwoermds is that I have little time to make them because ice melts quickly and the letters begin to slip over the non-cloth surfaces. I love to make a poem in the moment, without planning. I love to allow myself to write without a net, to solve problems in an instant, to make something that is pure and immediate inspiration.

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Flag

Geof Huth, asemic pwoermd (25 April 2017)

Time goes faster and faster. Even the pwoermds seem faster today. Five days left to this long month, and the deadline poet is flagging.

pw(o’er)md

Fullest

Geof Huth, "furth" (24 April 2017)

Despite the moderate struggle I've been having during this International Pwoermd Writing Month, it is the fullest month ever. My volume of work (not at all a measure of value) is much higher than previously, likely because I've decided to create ten pwoermds or pwoermd-related things a day, which would lead to at least 300 of these by the end of the month.

However, the struggle to find powermds of different kinds each day has, unintentionally, caused me to write more pwoermds made out of letters alone, pwoermds with no essential visual presentation. Because of this, my little Pwoermdbottle II is filling fast with tiny pwoermds written on cardboard, leading me to worry (just a bit) that the bottle may not be able to hold every pwoermd I write this month.

Not a bad state of affairs, if one is like me and likes to make many things, big and small. I don't even mind if they're all small, just that they entertain, even if only with puns. But more about puns tomorrow.

pw(o'er)md

Flailing

Geof Huth, "ink-link" (23 April 2017)

The days get longer as I try to produce these various types of pwoermds all day. The life of a deadline poet is taxing and tiring.

I slept more than twelve hours last night into this morning, but I'm still tired enough to head to bed early (for me) tonight. It is probably more than the minor work of trying to think up one-word poems that is tiring me out. Probably one of many underlying health problems. But we'll see in the end.

Regardless, today was a good day of pwoermds. At least.

pw(o’er)md

Fading

Geof Huth, "0-squared" (22 April 2017)

Too tired to pwoermd, I pwoermd some more: phading.

pw(o’er)md

Frisk

Geof Huth, "intraswashtic" (21 April 2017)

The pwoermd is found.

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Famished

Geof Huth, "emchanted" (20 April 2017)

I'm hungry. What happens to me these days (because of age or illness) is that I become tired and my voice goes flat whenever I'm too hungry, and that is happening to me right now, as I wait for dinner to begin, and while I have no idea when it will begin.

But I'm famished for another reason as well. The evening has begun, and I've created most of the types of pwoermds I have to create each day in April, but I yet to create the final two: the found pwoermd, which I'll probably be able to do with a little searching; and the object pwoermd, which is more of a problem since I didn't even bring any objects with me.

I'm still hoping for someone at my Mid-Atlantic Archives Conference meeting to hand me a good object today, but I really never expected anyone would. I'll have to find an object by walking the streets of Newark later on.

The night might get interesting.

pw(o'er)md

Fess

Geof Huth, "gnesst" (19 April 2017)

Tonight, I planned for my month's worth of object pwoermds, at the last minute. I am running out of reasonable objects to create object pwoermds with, and I'm heading (via Path train at a cost of $2.75) to Newark for the spring 2017 conference of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, an association I've been a member of since 1988. So I sent the following note out to the Facebook page for the organization, thus admitting, even more openly than usual, how poem- and art-obsessed I am:

MARACkers, here's a weird request. Every April, I make at least 30 object pwoermds, which are objects I encrust with a one-word poem. This year, I'm running low on collected objects and heading to Newark (not far from home) tomorrow without any objects to make pwoermds with. So if you have any small objects you think are interesting and might hold the kiss of ink (and you're willing to part with them), take them to Newark for me, and I'll remember you as the giver (well, I'll document it). Tonight's object pwoermd is pictured below, along with the archival materials I use to hold them for storage in my personal papers at the University at Albany. This is art, poetry, and archives (okay, and craziness) all at once. Objects have to be no bigger than 4 X 3.5 x 1.25 inches in size to fit in the box. Though I may be able to use other objects for other projects, if you have something larger to donate to this less than essential cause. Thanks.

pw(o'er)md

Fit

Geof Huth, “Pwoermdbottle II: Day 18” (18 April 2017)

I have run into a new problem this year. I keep thinking I can barely think of pwoermd so, but I've made so many this month that my pwoermdbottle is almost full, and I still have twelve days to go!

pw(o’er)md

Fill

Geof Huth, “flyspeek” (17 April 2017)

The word is our fill, if our hunger is for language. We can drink a stream of words cool as water to soothe and temper us. In the desert, every source of water is holy and essential.

Yet even those thirsting will reach their fill. At some point, the stomach can hold no more water, the body won’t allow further hydration. Satedness comes sometimes in the form of revulsion to what one most wants and needs.

In a world with a surfeit of data, so much of it reduced to lettered words, the mere thought of the alphabet can repel the literary person, who searches frantically for an image sans word, a corner void of text, a languageless tableau.

Sometimes, the only antidote to the disease of language is the smallest linguistic fragment one can find. Just a word. Language out of context. The streamless seme.

The pwoermd performs not so much as language than as its opposite. The isolation of language. The reductio ad absurdum of poetry. The last refuge of the word-studded poet.

A poem of a syllable. Or a few. No need to take even a single breath during the performance of it. So small you might forget you ever heard it. Or saw it. Or understood it.

Yet the pwoermd somehow cures you of language, and your parched tongue becomes—once again—wet enough to speak, so you must say and do say,

"Stop."

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Fist

A pwoermd comes at you all at once. You might not have time to dodge it.

pw(o'er)md

Found

Geof Huth, asemic pwoermd (15 April 2017)

In a sense--and probably the truest sense--every poem is found. This is not to say that every poem is a found poem, but only that the mind, often without any external inputs, finds poems that it didn't realize it was making.

All of this falls into my provable belief that everything we do as a human is extemporaneous. No matter how planned an action or event is, it is still guided by the tendencies of chaos and entropy, by the malleability of the human mind, by oversight and error--and by skilled improvisation.

Life, in the end, in the middle, and at the outset, is nothing by acts of extemporaneity. We can control nothing absolutely.

This process of improvisation, which is more a struggle for inspiration through dint of effort, is on my mind as I work through International Pwoermd Writing Month, because I'm trying to create so many kinds of pwoermds and pwoermd-related products each day. I try to keep my mind active and to focus on objects to find ideas in them, because I've so completely wrung my mind dry of all the ideas that are usually churning there.

Ironically, the hardest thing for me to find each day is a found pwoermd. Some days I just run across them. Other days I have to search high and low for words, only to decide that a fragment I see inside a word can constitute that day's found pwoermd.

So the struggle to be a productive pwoermdist continues, now fully half way through this month in celebration of the pwoermd.

pw(o'er)md

Fashion

Geof Huth, "calme" (14 April 2017)

Even an activity as small (in so many ways) as the creation of pwoermds is controlled by fashions. One pwoermdist finds a new way to make such a poem, and the rest of us start experimenting with that technique.

My overall technique is to try to do everything possible all at once, thus totally accepting and totally abolishing the vagaries of fashion as I move through various modes.

But, in the end, we are all just who we are. We make in our own particular ways, and we changes via those same constraints. Yet there is something bigger than us (not quite a movement), maybe just the practice of a practice, that joins us together in this odd pursuit to make a tiny poem.

One fashion in the western world is to measure the least and most of everything. The heaviest man, the shortest person; the winningest coach, the rejectedest writer. But I have yet to see the Guinness Book of World Records to recognize that the shortest poem (a four-legged m by Aram Saroyan) is actually a pwoermd: a one-word poem, though the poem is nothing but a letter enhanced.

I might, after a fashion, quibble with their choice, since I'd claim this (I think, quite successful) pwoermd of mine is actually the world's shortest poem:

Ï

I mean, mine is three legs shorter than Aram's.

pw(o'er)md

Favor

Geof Huth, "burge" (13 April 2017)

Today, I had to answer questions for an interview for a work-related newsletter, and still I found a way to promote pwoermds:

What would people be surprised to learn about you? (not just in the professional arena…do you play banjo, study karate, make the best sushi ever…)

I consider myself the world’s expert in three different but very narrow areas: one-word poems, praecisio, and antidictionaries. I’ve certainly written more about these topics than anyone. One-word poems (which I call pwoermds) are usually invented words presented alone as a complete poem, and I’ll be speaking about this form of poetry in Aachen, Germany, this May. Praecisio is a figure of speech in which one makes one’s point by saying nothing, instead of saying something. Taking a moment of silence, for instance, is an example of praecision: honoring the memory of someone by thinking about the person instead of speaking, because one’s words could never be enough. Antidictionaries are works of literature in dictionary form that do not truly define words even though they appear to do so. The most famous of these is The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce. I donated my huge collection of dictionaries and antidictionaries, including dozens of editions of Bierce’s, to the University at Albany. I often say that anyone can be a world’s expert in something if they only choose narrowly enough.

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Fast

Geof Huth, "poetigist" (12 April 2017)

Hilton Garden Inn, Room 716, Albany, NY

The pwoermd is fast.

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Frenetic

Geof Huth, "QUOX" (11 April 2017)

It is too much to ask oneself to make so many unique, even if little, things in one day. The body feels it. The press of time becomes oppressive just before it becomes offensive.

The mind is pulled in many directions, so it is pulled a little apart. Such frenetic making, without a concomitantly intense seeing, hearing, and taking-in, just tires the self.

For days cannot be set aside only for making. There was also the seven hours of driving I did today, the hourslong visit, the conversation with strangers in the bar. The latter was a good reprieve, but it lasted long enough to make the day seem too long.

Too long for what? Too long to make a eight pwoermds, write a few of them down by hand, and write the tiniest essay about the results.

Of course, I might have needed more sleep than I had managed to squeeze in last night (AKA this morning). So we'll see what tomorrow brings.

pw(o'er)md