As Exhibit Corpse teaches, poetry can happen anywhere! Check out this fun article in the NY Times:

“Come Ride With Me”

By ALAN FEUER
Published: June 5, 2009

Craigslist is an electronic snapshot of a community, classified advertising meets general store. It is the place to find a roommate — or a room, or what to furnish it with. Activities are listed, jobs are offered, services swapped.

The Missed Connections category is a treasure-trove of found poetry. These verses are taken verbatim from notices posted last week on newyork.craigslist.org, but for the added line and stanza breaks. The titles were the subject headings.

Visit the article to read the poems that resulted, but here is a brief preview:

Glasses at the Gym
I seriously cannot tell
if you’re checking me out
or are just liberal
with the eye contact
or what.
41st St NYSC,
we both wear glasses,
blah blah blah.

Awesome site I was just turned on to by poet and poetic-bridge, Ryan Eckes:

http://phillysound.blogspot.com/

Great way to keep up with poetry happening in the city. Perhaps there is a way here to link up with Corpse…

This video is even more awesome than our first. I know … hard to believe…
Enjoy! And get inspired to get moving! There’s a whole world of murals and poets out there, artists ripe for discovery.

Check out this great site, Delirious Hem, devoted entirely to bringing to light the various manifestations of feminist and feminist-permeated poetry. Here is their mission statement:

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like: what branch of feminism, model of feminist poetics, feminist icon, or etc. informs your poetry? Or, from which of these does your poetry diverge? Are there particular feminist tactics you employ? Do you consider yourself a feminist in many ways, but don’t particularly involve it in the poetry? Feel free to take liberties with the questions! Short, long, essay, manifesto, whatever appeals to you!

Again, that’s Delirious Hem, curated by poet Danielle Pafunda.

Check out our first Corpse video!

He thought he kept

The heart of his lover on his left side.

Burning and transforming

Flowers and butterflies

Sink to the surface

Bubbles are not heavy

But life, today, RIGHT NOW, is!

Special

I am special

I like myself

I am unique

I am exotic

I do things unusual

How are you exotic?

Why are you exotic?

Man that’s really good. If I may explicate, seems to me that the poem begins in forlorn love, in cavernous, sinking feelings of disconnection. These feelings, this disconnect, as always, lead into the “heavy” and unbearable depths of the cavern where we see, for some time, no way out.

But then, there is, in the smallest steps, a way out! And what is that way? It is through recognizing the  “special” in our worlds. It is through appreciating the minute and lovely details that make a life unique, dazzling, enticing. And it is, above all, through self-love! Through recognizing our own “specialness.” Through coming to terms with the fact that though love might leave, we are still loveable beings. Special. Unique. Likeable.

And eventually, enough self-love can build up, enough self-love can accumulate that we once again can open back up onto the world: I am special, I am unique, I am exotic, I do things unusual…How are YOU exotic?

Once we have reencountered ourselves as worthy of love, once we have healed from the alienations and hurts of our past, we can begin looking back out on the world and allowing new lives, new experiences, new responses to enter into our spheres.

How cool is that! This is a perfect response to the Robert Frost poem in that it shows how we can eventually discover “counter-love, original response.” We simply have to understand that establishing such connection is a process and we have to allow ourselves to engage in every step of that process, including the aching parts.  Perhaps Frost’s poem is an illustration of just another piece of that process, the piece of hopelessness and dejection, the “heavy” moment…out of which lightness of being will eventually emerge and engage other people.

Hello hello! In the process of compiling today’s poem, we ran into the owner of Grillo’s Pickles,  the best pickle place this side of the Atlantic. And here is the poem which Mr. Grillo himself contributed to. Can you spot his line?

He thought he kept

to the depth

of my cheesesteak filled stomach

I wish it was not

A fat juicy Grillo’s Pickle dripping down my chin. On my way back to Boston

I’m tired and would like a beer. Dog’s Blood.

Pay out the ass or earn it.

I don’t have any lines to write

But this line Im [sic] writing should suffice

Although sometimes I’m confused and make no sense.

I have to take the consideration of others into account

Today, on the Broad Street Line, I ran (actually walked) across what could legitimately count as a Corpse. Someone had papered the floor of the train car with pages of quotes from the Bible. 

That's my foot in the left corner

Regardless of what we think of the message, this is a highly effective corpse. It is noticeable and abundant. Whereas our own Corpsing so far has been too dispersed to intrigue viewers.

So, I’ve decided that it’s best that we localize our papering for now. That is, I don’t think we should venture outside of South Philly, and even within South Philly, we need to be pretty conservative with how far and wide we walk and paper. Because if we can post several stickers in one 5-block radius, then we may able to invite viewership more readily than if the stickers are too dispersed for anyone to see a connection…

Corpsing is so fun and great! How can we make sure others see the same!??!

Hi, Corpsers!!

Just a reminder that video clips of our corpsing activities so far will be headed the way of this blog soooon! So please keep an eye out and tell all your friends! Let’s paper this city with all we have to say!

Did Corpsers perhaps precede us in these lovely wooded haunts?