10,000-page poem published
Who says poetry is dead? Those quarter-pagers in The New Yorker about the smell of winter on a haystack, those aren’t poems. This is a poem: “Poetry City Marathon” by David Morice, who sometimes goes by Dr. Alphabet. Last year Morice wrote a 100-page poem every day for 100 days. Yep, that’s 10,000 pages, and now the University of Iowa (where Morice got his MFA) is publishing it.
Your first question might be why? Why force yourself to write 100 pages of poetry a day and then publish every single unedited one? Morice, the so-called “P.T. Barnum of Poetry,” has been staging poetry marathons since he and some Iowa City buddies created the Actualist Movement in the 1970s. The picture below shows him “wrapping a city block in poetry.”
In this new 10k poem, as with all Morice’s work, the process is more important than the final result. But as far as poetics are concerned it reads more like a heavily enjambed nonfiction essay, available in its entirety in individually downloadable chapters. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning.
In front of the University/Main Library, Gordon sits/on a marble wall, camera/posed to video the beginning/of this poetry marathon.
I climb the brick steps/laptop in hand. A guy/reading a book nearby/gets up and leaves./Gordon apologizes for/us scaring him away/I cross over the patio
to the North Entrance,/reach my hand out,/grab the door handle,/and pull once, twice,/three times. “Hey, this/door’s locked. I’m/supposed to start writing/today. What’s the deal?”
Joye yells to me, “It’s/the Fourth of July. The/library’s closed.” I slap/the top of my head.
Read more about its publication and the nightmare that was binding it.
