Weather

The premise of the work, a poetic study of weather reportage, reveals much to me about the text. Some of the language is borrowed from weather description, lines such as "a slight cloud drifts contrary to the planet" are an example of this. By searching the text for this kind of language, we can view the crossover realm between the object data Robertson studied and the poetry it inspired. This realm is not always in the sentences themselves but in the transition between sentences. Before I knew about the premise of the book, I could not understand why the words were written, I could not surmise the intention behind a single line. Now, not only can I see the weather language, but many of the concepts in the work are more clear. The language of weather description is a perfect parallel with the language of poetry. Both strive to impart the reader with an understanding of the state of an environment. The results they achieve, however, are entirely different from the experience of the state of that environment. Robertson writes without giving us the illusion of experiencing the state of her consciousness, which would have inevitably changed, like the weather, from the state the description describes.

Writing Experiment (Week 10)

Here are some writing experiments for this week:

1. With notepad in hand, go for a 20 - 60 minute walk, paying attention as much as possible to only one color; record all the things found in this one color; take your notepad home and compose a story or poem based on all your observations.

OR

2. Make up a poem of 26 words so that each word begins with the next letter of the alphabet, or write a story in which each sentence contains four words that begin with the same letter, starting with 'A' and moving through 'Z'.