Laura Lippman’s “ModPo Magic 8-Ball”

Long-time ModPo regular Laura Lippman sent us the ModPo Magic 8-Ball. She wrote to us about the project. Here is what she wrote, in part:

I’m a docent at the American Visionary Art Museum, which encourages people to try their hand at art. [Once] I was asked to decorate a piggy bank and decoupaged one with text. I have since decoupaged shoes, lampshades and a Magic 8-Ball.

A word about the methodology of creating the ModPo Magic 8-Ball: I printed out copies of poems from the main syllabus, week by week. I them cut them down to lines or phrases and placed these slips of paper into numbered brown lunch bags. I drew from the bags in sequential order until one bag was finally empty, adding the random lines to the 8-Ball with no real design other than: “I think that woulid look good here.” Sometimes I would forget from which bag I had just drawn and I was delighted to be able to identify the poem by only a line—and also to. know which week it was from.

I didn’t pick poems I don’t particularly like. But it was otherwise a truly random experiment. Please accept the ModPo Magic 8-Ball as my thanks and a tribute for a life-changing experience. I like it very much and am somewhat sad to relinquish it, which is a good sign.