"(Soma)tic Poetry Exercise," by CA Conrad
from jubilat 20
I know I'm not the first, and I pray God won't make the last to say this: CA Conrad is irresistible. I'm talking I want the inside of his voice inside me. Inside, like the diction and rhetoric of these poems makes me think of 10,000 pressed cardboard hand-held fans all fluttering in my face, and they spell out "CA" in giant white script, and I think, why, I didn't know hand-held fans could pay attention to someone like me. But these fans, I think they like me. "CA!" I want to say. And I don't know him well enough to say just his initials. But when you read his poems, you feel like, "Hey, CA, don't I know you?"
What's funny is that that's what "(Soma)tic Poetry Exercise" is all about! How we know people. Or how people know each other on that weird psychic level. Maybe we know dogs like that. Maybe we know strangers like that. CA (I almost find it improper to refer to him with the more formal "Conrad") is toying with this common belief that we communicate just by thinking of someone. He's flattering our common beliefs. And then he's encouraging them. And from there, oh my God, it is irresistible. What he says makes sense. "We are one!"
I can go on. CA has asked all of us to go on for seven days. Seven days is not that long. And, then, it turns out seven days is just long enough to make this "Exercise" something serious. Really, he is asking us to sit around the people we know, and later the people who are strangers to us, and to think about each of them. He says we should focus our attention, our imagined conversation. We should become masters of thinking like this. We should imagine being recognized. We should take notes about how it feels. And we should make poems with those notes. Poems! I feel like CA is telling this to me alone, and I want to make poems then. I finish reading this "Exercise" with so much delight and enthusiasm filling me. And I believe every bit of what he says. I can make poems, and I'll call them "By CA!"
And honestly, if you're reading this issue of jubilat, you need to pair "(Soma)tic Poetry Exercise" reading with the interview Matthea Harvey does with Abraham Burickson. He's the founder of Odyssey Works. Burickson and his crew will create a performance tailored specifically to you. As in, they send a questionnaire, they find out everything about you, and then they show up in your life. And the point is your life will change. Or at least it might.
Recommended links:
jubilat
The Book of Frank
Advanced Elvis Course
CA Conrad has a home homepage.
Odyssey Works (for the adventurous!)
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