experimental model

The Child of God Came, As I Lay Dying

As I lay dying,
she wouldn’t wait.

It,

like so many flames.
As I lay dying,
you want Darl?

Drinks,
you want Darl?
It,
now them others sitting there, like buzzards.
Get a good breed, because Mr.

came like a caravan.
Him, the musicians looked like compositions.
It must have thowed his neck out someway or another.
Later on,
dust and slats of sunlight

onto the floor
for ye and you all.

Get your goddamn ass
out along the cupped floorboards and subsided,
dust and slats of sunlight.

The experimental poem The Child of God Came, As I Lay Dying is an experimental poem derived from Charles Bernstein’s list of experimental poems. This poem is an altered form of the acrostic chance poem. A poem of acrostic chance consists of the title of a novel as the acrostic key phrase. Within this key phrase each letter corresponds to a numerical number prescribed by the order of the alphabet; A equals one and Z equals twenty-six. These numbers then translate into the page from which you generate the poem. From each corresponding page is a line of the poem taken from the first word that begins with the letter that the numerical value was adapted until the end of the sentence or line. This model is an alternative version of the acrostic chance because it combines two acrostic key phrases from the title of two novels; William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Cormack McCarthy’s Child of God. The use of an experimental poem challenges the mainstream ideals of language, art, and ideology within poetry by altering the perception of the speaker and reader. With found text the identity of the speaker has changed and the language of the poem is inconsistent and sometimes incoherent and creates a greater need for analysis. This alteration of the mainstream style of poetry is, in the end, is unsuccessful. The poem lacks order and consistency. There is no central theme to the poem. Essentially it is only a combination of separate thoughts, trying to work together to create meaning. Even though some lines are taken from a particular novel, the thoughts and ideas are fragmented and incoherent. When these lines are taken out of context, the phrase inevitably loses its meaning and must lean on the whole poem to regain it. This redemption of meaning is possible, but not as concise as the typical mainstream poem, which uses the entirety of the lines to convey a certain theme or meaning. The only positive outlook for this style of poetry is the possibility of a meaning being developed by the reader. This idea again has a downfall because within mainstream poetry this development of meaning by the reader is still essential. This development of meaning must also be achieved by the poet, ultimately meaning the poem is created in hopes of a theme being inadvertently produced. This hopeful production of meaning is an unsuccessful style of poetry.