Frankensteining: An Exercise in Scraps

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”
–Virginia Woolf

As writers, we are each of us part observer, part critic, part dreamer, part mad scientist: we start with an idea or image and begin our furious stitching from there. But so often our creations go unfinished: we get stuck on a particularly difficult stitch, we run out of materials, or our lamp oil burns out just when we were getting somewhere good.

In my creative writing syllabi, KEEP EVERYTHING YOU WRITE IN THIS CLASS is stamped in the middle of the first page in red because it is in these secret, unfinished and identity-less lines where we can find some of our best work. In my own writing life, these orphan lines, these wisps of incantations, these “scraps…of madness” are filed in a “writing in progress” Word document, and for my students they are kept in their writing journals. At the end of the semester, when their apprenticeship has nearly ended, I turn the students loose in their lairs for the final assignment: The Frankenstein. Here is an excerpt from the assignment sheet:

Your mission: write a poem culled from lines in your drafts and exercises, both prose and poetry

The Overview:
1. Comb through your work and find 28 separate lines that could work poetically. These lines need not match in tense, POV, or theme.
2. Write these on separate notecards or type up, print out, and cut out individually.
3. Construct a 4×7 Frankenstein poem: 4 sections made from 7 different lines of your work.
• Difficult: Hand select which 7 lines work for each of the 4 sections.
• Mastery Level: Draw 7 lines randomly for each section.

The Rules:
• You are not allowed to change the lines in any significant way (yet).
• You are allowed to change POV, pronouns, or tense for unity and cohesion.
• You may provide transitional words or lead-in phrases to connect ideas.

Every semester this is voted as the favorite assignment. As a form of found poetry, it is an exercise in reading with a critical eye, evaluating each line for its potential strength in imagery, figurative tools, or its unusual or (dis)pleasing sound patterns. It is also a lesson in point of view, as the students examine the way the text shifts with voice and perspective. More, it is an exercise in meaning-making. The act of physically moving and manipulating lines encourages the writer to make clear connections between ideas and images. Whether the writer decides to hand-select the seven lines or draw them randomly, his or her goal in the end is the same: to create a living, breathing poem with an internal logic to its body.

Here is one example I use with the students, with randomly drawn lines:

1. When I inhale, whole cities inside of me collapse because my ribs are like packages wrapped too tightly.
2. sometimes when I see the moon barreling through the night, leaving nothing but a scratch in the sky, I wish it weren’t the sun setting on my clumsy heart
3. If she so desired, she could strip herself invisible because she can split the delicate tendons between her fingers just by breathing
4. you cannot smile on demand.
5. and the awkward jut of bone when you attempt to flee, politely.
6. There is a certain scent to disorder, to the deafening silences between misunderstanding and cumbersome conversation,
7. she’s learned that broken bones sound like embarrassment, and pratfalls taste like high school cafeterias.

These lines became this initial draft:

If she so desired, she could strip herself invisible because
she can split the delicate tendons between her fingers just by breathing and
she’s learned that broken bones sound like embarrassment,
and pratfalls taste like high school cafeterias.

She cannot smile on demand.
When she inhales, whole cities inside of her collapse
because her ribs are like packages wrapped too tightly.

There is a certain scent to disorder,
to the deafening silences between misunderstanding
and cumbersome conversation,
and the awkward jut of bone
when she attempts to flee, politely.

Still, sometimes when she sees the moon barreling through
the night, leaving nothing but a scratch in the sky,
she wishes it weren’t the sun setting on her clumsy heart.

---

And with a bit more stuffing and stitching (and a few more electrical volts), it eventually became “The Anthropologist” in my chapbook Perch:

The Anthropologist

If she so desired, she could strip herself invisible
because she can split the delicate tendons between her fingers
just by breathing

and she’s learned that broken bones sound like embarrassment
and pratfalls taste like hospital hallways.

When she inhales, whole cities inside of her collapse
because her ribs are packages wrapped too tightly.

When she exhales, the words hamster wheel behind her teeth
because she forgets to let them out.

There is a certain scent to disorder,
to deafening silences between misunderstanding
and cumbersome conversation,
the awkward jut of bone
when she attempts to flee, politely.

She cannot smile on demand
so please do not ask her
if she’s been imagining love for a very long time

because she only cultures loneliness
under ideal conditions
and optimal temperatures.

There is no control.

The act of creation is a difficult one. When I find myself blocked or feeling empty of ideas, I dig out my scraps and start piecing. Sometimes I bring something inspiring to life. Sometimes it turns into nothing but an exercise in play. Both are good, as they remind me of the inherent madness and magic of poetry, and that beautiful, electric spark that drives each of us to write.