ModPo update: week 9 begins

Welcome again to week 9.

In the main ModPo syllabus this week, we read and discuss the aleatory writing of John Cage, Jackson Mac Low, Jena Osman, and Joan Retallack—and the writing experiments of Bernadette Mayer (whom we met as a second-generation New York School poet two weeks ago).

During this week also, many ModPo people will be writing essay #4. This is a creative—or maybe I should say “uncreative”—assignment. You have two options. One is to write your own chance-operation-based poem (a “mesostic” using ModPo’s own mesostic-making machine). The other option is to write on the basis of one of Mayer’s writing experiments. For all the information you need about this fourth and final writing assignment, please go HERE.

If you aren’t planning to write assignment #4, I still encourage you to play around with ModPo’s Mesostic Poem Generator. Feel free to post your mesostic!

Here’s an 11-minute video in which we discuss how you might become accustomed to reading aleatory poetry.