for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you

today i went to a free poetry workshop in the bronx. the workshops are every sunday, and you don't have to sign up in advance, or any silliness like that, which i like. they also come across really great people to teach them. the workshops are mostly for generative purposes, meaning the teacher throws out exercises or prompts and you work on those. i'd never been to one before, because i kind of figure i get all the poetry i really need up at sarah lawrence, but i have two poems "due" on tuesday and hadn't written any, so i figured this was a good time. and you know, i did write and it was a good group and all, but one thing was sort of strange to me.

in the beginning of the workshop the teacher passed out index cards and we each had to write one secret that related to ourselves or not, one secret that did relate to ourselves, and one thing that we're afraid of. so then we passed them back in and he read them aloud, but before he read them aloud, he told us to write down the ones that we found striking as we heard them. so we did. and then afterwards he told us to write starting from the lines we liked.

now WAIT A MINUTE. this was weird. the poem that i wrote didn't end up using any of the lines that i had heard off the index cards but some people who read their poems at the end had my lines in them, and i didn't like it. all of a sudden you see your "secret" in someone else's poem, but also, like, fuck! that's my line motherfucker!

yeah, alright. it's ok because everyone took what they took and made it their own, but i had a sort of uncomfortable feeling about the whole thing. like i just wrote down three lines for other people to steal them. whatever.

i know poetry is all about stealing. i steal all the time. sometimes my friends say things that wind up in my poems, but i only do this to my nonpoet friends, because whatever, it's not like they were gonna write a poem anyway. and we steal from the world don't we? blah blah blah BLAH.

the lesson is obviously that the only thing you should ever steal is a hamburger, and even then, even then, man.

happy 50th blog post, you guyz!