(Post by Kirsten)
Today I'm thinking about distance. According to a quick web search, distance comes from the Latin distant, which means "the stand apart." We use the word, of course, to mean both a literal and a metaphorical "standing apart." Here are a few examples:
- To "be distant" = to emotionally reserve oneself from others, or to be emotionally unreachable
- To "distance yourself" = to intentionally cut off communication with another person
- To "get a little distance" = to give time or space to an idea about which you're not certain
- "Across the distance" = to feel emotionally connected, even when you're apart from someone else
How have other artists thought about the concept of distance?
Well, here's an Emily Dickinson poem on the topic.
And here's an old favorite from the band Cake:
Now, what do you have to say about distance?
Today's prompt is to both write about distance, and to show distance in the structure of your poem/prose piece. Write a blackout--or erasure--poem or prose piece today. If you haven't practice this form of writing before, here's a tutorial from poet Austin Kleon. Find an existing text (a newspaper works great, but if you don't have that you can use almost any other piece of text--an old piece of mail, instructions from a game you no longer need, a scanned page from a book, etc.), then use a marker to "erase" by coloring over all of the words you don't want to include in your original poem/prose piece.
Think about space as you do this exercise. What do the words you've chosen look like on the page? What does the extra space between them do to enrich or create meaning in the piece? How could you use space in your work more effectively?
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