![]() But where did the sadness go? People wanted to know. It’s a might, might, might and I don’t know.”Ģ4) An often campy obsession with science/sci-fi terminologyĮxample: From “Side Effects” by Dean Young: “… but his experiments / at the cyclotron don’t amount to much dark matter”Ģ5) Self-aware naivete of tone and dictionĮxample: From “The Crowds Cheered As Gloom Galloped Away” by Matthea Harvey: “Everyone was happier. The shtick of the party, the excuse of it”įrom “Hounds Begin to Howl” by Clay Matthews: “Like calling people meat. Many thanks to Elisa Gabbert for the bulk of the work on this list.įrom “As If To Say” by Chris Nealon: “I seriously have a mind of winter”įrom “Sheer Commerce” by Phillip Byron Oakes: “Grecian urn your / pay”įrom “Gone Before” by Dobby Gibson: “Sadness, though your beard may be fake, / your anonymity is quite real, / whispered the dying man to his nurse”įrom “Running Away Jam” by Jason Bredle: “I wish I could take a microphone everywhere I go so everyone / would hear me / is how I began a letter to my parents”įrom “Homecoming” by Dorianne Laux: “At the high school football game, the boys / stroke their new muscles”įrom “Vehicle” by Heather Christle: “… Man / in the dining car, stop eavesdropping / on children talking about balloons.”Įxample: From “Governors on Sominex” by David Berman: “They’d closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings”Ģ3) Moving the poem forward by associating one word with an unrelated word that sounds similarįrom “Social Life” by Alice George: “I’ve / got the wrong end of the stick or maybe // it’s the way I’m holding it, the way it’s sharp. With mildly related pictures! In no particular order! Please argue and add in the comments. So here it is, our stab at cataloging 41 popular moves in “contemporary poetry,” an exercise that’s fraught with peril, what with the competing definitions, camps, roles, and processes of “contemporary poetry,” the nebulousness of calling something a “move,” the inevitable non-definitiveness of such a list, and so on, but hey: dancing is fraught with peril too, and no one’s managed to stop me from doing that. Well, I thought that sounded like a terrific idea. Let me know if you want to collaborate on a list of moves for HTMLGiant.” ![]() Then she posted the following comment: “Hi Mike, I have definitely talked about moves before, moves I like and moves I don’t like and my own signature moves, but haven’t made a real list, certainly not a comprehensive list, certainly not the DEFINITIVE list. Way back in the comments on Danika Stegeman’s poem “Panacea,” a discussion started about “moves” in contemporary poetry, and I mentioned that I’d seen the poet Elisa Gabbert start pretty awesome discussions about “moves” on her own blog and on the Ploughshares blog.
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