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[poetsorg]

Throughout National Poetry Month, we’ll be featuring a letter/postcard of advice from 30 Poets. Today’s is from Ben Fama.

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OCCUPY JERRY’S IN OCTOBER [a collaborative poem by Andrew Dieck, Patrick Gaughan, Alina Gregorian, Christine Kanownik, Denes Krusovszky, Ann Lauterbach, Paul Legault, Steven Motika, Dan Poston and Ben Richmond]

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One thing collaboration gives is the frequent if not constant feeling of being surprised, of being led where one had no idea one was going, and finding that being there one has something interesting to say.

Kenneth Koch

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collaborate USA part 2

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“Not only was collaborating a way to be at work and at a party at the same time, but it gave me the chance to do a kind of work I couldn’t otherwise do. I had an instantaneous perceptive audience for every move I made (word I wrote); ordinarily getting a response takes longer than that. We worked fast, and wanted to get a lot done. If my words weren’t perfect, Larry could fix them with some red or yellow; the same for his brushstrokes and pictures, I could amend them with adjectives and nouns. At least, we assumed so. All this created an atmosphere, of speed and excitement, that might or might not make for really good work, but it made for a certain kind of work that neither of us did alone, and whatever this was might turn out to be good.”

Kenneth Koch

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c o l l a b o r a t e usa

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“I can’t get enough of Guston’s pink, that color that persists beneath all the hair and machines, body armor and telethons. I want to call that pink in me the pink in you. A kind of salmon talisman. Even the cat wants to eat it up!” 

— Chris Martin and Mary Austin Speaker

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