Two poems for the Poetry Scout Month project used the April 23rd issue of Rolling Stone as a resource: Down the Rabbit Hole and A Terrifying Band for Our Children When You Look Back. A friend gave me a subscription to Rolling Stone (prior to the campus rape hub-bub), and this project gave me a chance to put a back issue to good use.
“Down the Rabbit Hole” was in response to the Pinch an Inch prompt. The instructions direct you to select a column inch anywhere on the x-axis of the page. This was interesting to do with a magazine, since all the magazines I have handy (Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Outdoor Photographer) are divided into three columns of ~inch each per page. So, all I had to do was decide what article to use, and which of the three pre-determined column inches to select. I thought a music review would be the most likely to have “poetic language”, so I selected the lead review, which was in the far right-hand column. Just to make things interesting, I selected two more reviews on the opposite side of the page - both also in the far-right hand column. The poem takes its title from the third of these reviews.
“A Terrfying Band” was in response to the Picture It prompt. I had a hard time groking the instructions for this badge, until I reviewed what other poets had done in response. I finally decided the easiest method was to simply doodle on the page and black out any words that might mislead the reader. The result still did not reflect my intent, so I typed out the version of the poem I intended. The source text was an interview with Peter Townsend. He's been somewhat on my mind, as I've been obsessively wood-shedding “Pinball Wizard” whenever I wasn't working on this project.
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