INVENTION : Unmatched things : Introduction

Many of the games in other sections of this book, and almost all within this section, use the connection of objects to ideas to spark the poem. The source objects are not usually quite as random as the surrealist's chance meeting on an ironing board, since most players need some elements of obvious common ground. However, the process of association and connective inspiration is of general application within poetry, perhaps most clearly summed up in this poem:

APPROXIMATELY

Unmatched things he takes in his hands - a stone,
a broken roof-tile, two burnt matches,
a rusty nail in the opposite wall,
the leaf blown in through the window, the drops
that fall from the soaked flowerpots, that straw there
that the wind carried yesterday into your hair - he takes them
and there in his courtyard he builds approximately a tree.
In this "approximately" sits poetry. Do you see it?

Yannis Ritsos

peripou © Estate of Yannis Ritsos
from
TESTIMONIES Volume Two (Ekdoseis Kedros, Athens 1966)
translation by Dave Calder

For further information on this sort of game click on games listed under INVENTION in the INDEX side bar.