July 5: Found poem
Kristen Lindquist
Like Proust's madeleine, sometimes unexpected, extremely prosaic things will trigger a flood of poetic thoughts and reveries. Today I was validating our CCR registration, a mind-numbingly bureaucratic process on the computer. (Don't ask me what CCR stands for; our government loves acronyms! It has something to do with making sure the land trust I work for is properly registered in the right system to receive government grants.) Where's the poetry in that? The last step of registering myself as a user for our account was to set up a series of five security questions, questions such as...
What was your childhood nickname?
What is the name of your favorite childhood friend?
What street did you live on in third grade?
What was the name of your first stuffed animal?
What was the last name of your third grade teacher?
What is the street number of the house you grew up in?
What was your high school mascot?
On what street did your best friend in high school live?
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
What is your favorite fruit?
What is your favorite fragrance?
What time of day were you born?
When I came back to the present from my little trip down memory lane, I found myself wondering if the office worker tasked with making up these questions enjoyed coming up with them as much as I did trying to answer (all of) them (in my head).
Even government
red tape can have the power
to inspire poems.
(And here's something perhaps even more prosaic: I wrote this blog entry while downloading Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 onto my computer. Who says we can't fit poetry into our mundane and busy lives?)
What was your childhood nickname?
What is the name of your favorite childhood friend?
What street did you live on in third grade?
What was the name of your first stuffed animal?
What was the last name of your third grade teacher?
What is the street number of the house you grew up in?
What was your high school mascot?
On what street did your best friend in high school live?
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
What is your favorite fruit?
What is your favorite fragrance?
What time of day were you born?
When I came back to the present from my little trip down memory lane, I found myself wondering if the office worker tasked with making up these questions enjoyed coming up with them as much as I did trying to answer (all of) them (in my head).
Even government
red tape can have the power
to inspire poems.
(And here's something perhaps even more prosaic: I wrote this blog entry while downloading Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 onto my computer. Who says we can't fit poetry into our mundane and busy lives?)