Charge! Electricity in Poetry
Aaron Poochigian
We all know it—the zap, the frisson that storms the synapses—when we encounter a striking word or phrase in a poem. This class aims to teach the poet how to generate and artfully deploy these electric shocks. With examples drawn from poets ranging everywhere from Philip Larkin to Lucie Brock-Broido, this two-day, six-hour class will provide ample concrete instances from which poets can galvanize their own poetry, as Benjamin Franklin’s kite captured lightning in a key.
Charge!
Come with me, other; come and take this in:
the livewire “I,” the hive inside the head,
the “Rama Lama” and the “Ding Dong” din,
the brain-cheese needs of the sublime undead,
the slip, the trip, the way we sit and spin
when whiffs make visions, and our dreads drip red;
come with me, kiss that bodiced goddess, Sin,
who laughs and laughs, lashing you to the bed—
anything, everything, except the dull
quotidian of sterilized convention,
the gloom du jour, the waiting room, the null
and void, the yawns that I disdain to mention.
Come with me, live, instead, the beautiful
disjunction that is art: electric tension.
—Aaron Poochigian
