"Experiment #9: Creating a Village," by Rebecca Elliott
from Artifice 4
I honestly don't know what I would use to create a village. I imagine at the very least I would get plywood and backhoes and clay shingles, and it would have to happen in the Midwest. I'm only interested in creating a village somewhere in the Midwest. It would take some consulting from Hillary Clinton, since she's very interested in villages. But isn't there a village-ness that goes beyond these kinds of practical details? It's kind of like the difference between "house" and "home." Whenever I move to a new place, I'm always conscious of the moment I switch from referring to it as "the house," and I call it "home" instead. What entitles a house to be called a home?
Rebecca Elliott might say language. Because for her, you make a village from language. You name all the things arond you. Then you combine those names, and if you're good, they make the shape of a building. You name the building. Eventually you invite people to live there. And those people are going to have their own things, and you name them. And in my mind this whole thing is growing into a great Legoland puzzle of words that miraculously fit with one another. Except they're not as shiny as legos, they're more like the color of "lived in." Reading Elliott's poem "Experiment #9: Creating a Village" in the #4 issue of Artifice, I want to create that village. Or, mainly, I want to live there. Then I want to be the one to create the next village. Because it sounds easy enough.
Not just easy, either. How about it looks like fun. I've seen a set of instructions used as a poem before. For me, the move usually fails because the poet won't leave the list alone. The poet wants to be too clever too soon. But the instructions need to read like a real set of instructions, not just a display of imagination gusto. Of course, this is a common problem with many contemporary poems. They operate more on imaginative flash rather than imaginative vision. With Elliott's "Experiment #9" the vision is so strong and so invigorating it's giving off imaginative flashes without even trying.
Recommeneded links:
Artifice
furtherexperiments.com - Elliott's official web page. Might I recommend the Chicago Poem/Map.
