SHOPPING FOR IMAGES
Thursday, May 29th, 2008 | PermalinkWhat thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
—Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California“
This weekend I was flying home from Cleveland, looked down at my New Yorker, and had a mini-revelation:
Underlining. Highlighting. Circling. When we read interactively, when we “alter” texts, we’re isolating little bits of writing that speak to us. Fire our imaginations. Illuminate something.
It’s the same thing when we hyperlink: we’re pointing to something that speaks to us.
And it’s the same thing when I make a blackout poem.
When the CIA redacts a document:
It’s the same practice done in the opposite spirit: they’re isolating text that speaks to no one!
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March 7th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
[...] words that put a picture in your head. Allen Ginsberg called it “shopping for images” (link). I once made a joke that the business section makes for the worst poems, because that’s [...]
May 26th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
[...] I take an index card and set my tea bag down on it, letting the card soak up the tea. Then, I shop for images on the card, and riff off those with some doodles and [...]
May 27th, 2009 at 6:26 am
[...] SHOPPING FOR IMAGES Underlining. Highlighting. Circling. When we read interactively, when we “alter” texts, we’re isolating little bits of writing that speak to us. Fire our imaginations. Illuminate something. [...]
June 28th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
[...] Shop for images in the panels, and riff off those with some doodles and captions to make a mini-narrative [...]