corn 3

The repetitive appearance of the word “corn” in “Everything I Know About Corn” is a pattern. The pattern is like corn kernels. The poem is shaped vaguely like an ear of corn, tall and narrow. The little words corn, corn, corn show up in the poem like the yellow kernels in the black corn, or the red kernels in the multicolored corn.

Does this seem obvious?

I studied Pattern Poetry with Lisa Jarnot, Spring 2009. Our text was “Pattern Poetry, Guide to an Unknown Literature” by Dick Higgins.

I find patterning meaningful when making poems about nature or ecopoetry. Nature is patterns, patterns are nature. We find a way to participate.

I also find this leads into a topic that we talked about in the Pattern Poetry class: poetry functioning as “a spell.” Aligning words with natural patterns in a way that holds power. One way to study this would be looking into the history of spellcasting. Of course, it holds a wicked skeevy charge even today, like you can’t possibly be serious. I’ve resisted this way for a long time, but I keep circling back to it. We have no faith in the power of words to work in this way. I don’t know where to go from there.

Kernel, kernel, kernel. You could make a drawing of an ear of corn and pencil in the little words and make the silk spilling out “frothy” with words and then you’d have a visual equivalent of this poem. Might be overchallenging to my graphics skills though.