Zipper Poetry (An Example, an Explanation, and a Challenge…)

1. An Example...

                        Out of Place

Claws retracted, breath
                               Strangely
inadequate for this
                               moving
unaccustomed heat — 
                               to see such danger
fully coated with a useless fur,
                               out of place —
a full grown leopard,
                               a knife hilted in sand,
the kind one finds in Himalayan snows,
                               a letter torn and scattered on the floor, or a metaphor
paces back and forth in a narrow cage
                               of corporal power on a quiet page,
watching me
                               like Blake's tyger,
watching him
                               and the only one he’d ever really seen,
warily.
                               jungled in a zoo.

2. An Explanation of Zipper Poetry...
   Evocative as metaphors can be, they are not the most syncopated way of pairing odd conceptual couples.  
    “The artist is a dog,” is a fine modern metaphor. 
    It works, principally, because the arrow of conceptual expectation (“The artist is...”) hits an UNexpected target (“...a dog.”).  It kinda makes you laugh (the intrinsic joy of experiencing the benign surprise) and then makes you wonder why the arrow was shot in that particular and odd direction.  Almost processional is the experience.  One marches from a subject down the (usually) straight line of grammar to a quirky complement.  Down the aisle we go full of expectation only to find a shocking, intriguing substitute waiting for us at the altar.  There is a beginning and an end, an idea and its provocative Redefinition.  The melody goes crazy but the rhythm is fairly dull. 
    Take, however...

    “The artist
             The dog...”
   
     for a different example.
    One is not the complement of the other; they are equal and not only can go anywhere but can be taken anywhere by the conceptual/syntactical antics of the other.  Talk about the UNexpected.  The sounds AND the concepts swing and the rhythm (syntactical) is everything (almost).  The magic is in the association of sustainably intriguing notions.  And the game for me has been to create poems that will bounce between two independent units and in their syntactical dance, create a whole new whole. 
   It was this rhythmic and conceptual experimentation that led, twenty some years ago, to the creation of the zipper poem – a poem in which two independently coherent lines of poetry are zipped, horizontally, together and, by the associational wizardry of the manipulated (or unexpectedly discovered) juxtapositions, a third poem, greater than the sum of its parts, is born. 

3. A Challenge: Your Turn…
   The zipper poem is a perfect form for collective creativity in that it can produce an endless chain of co-authored, co-crafted poems.  As such, the zipper poem is far closer in concept and craft to the renga poems of Japan than to most other modern Western innovations.
   So, take the line-break-less right side of the poem above, “Out of Place”:

“Strangely moving to see such danger out of place — a knife hilted in sand, a letter torn and scattered on the floor, or a metaphor of corporal power on a quiet page, like Blake's tyger, and the only one he’d ever really seen, jungled in a zoo.”

   Now, make it into the left side of a new zipper, put line breaks wherever you need them, and zip a completely new right side into it.  Voila, our first zipper. Now take your half and pass it on to someone else, asking your partner to add his or her half to yours.  Et voila, another “first” – but a second zipper.  But for the lack of interest and energy, the chain of zipper poems could be infinitely long.  However, when you stop and feel you have a good zipper poem, PLEASE send it to me (essays123@aol.com) with both names (or pseudonyms) attached and I will post it/them.  Thus, we create the first virtual collection of zippers.
   Note: if you are intrigued and would like to see how an entire story can be told in a series of zipper poems, take a look at my book Askew – Found and Lost in the Almost South of France (Pince Nez Press, 2007). 

 BUY

   Askew can be ordered through Booksmith Bookstore in San Francisco, California. 

   I have, as well, created an entire libretto for the opera, “Zipperez” (music by Nat Stookey) that will premiere with the Oakland East Bay Symphony on November 14.  Information about that can be seen at the symphony.

   The possibilities are endless.  Give, take, and collectively create.