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July 22, 2011

Poetry Friday--Objets Perdus

There is an interesting website called objets perdus/lost items that describes itself as the
site de gardiennage virtuel des objets perdus - galerie de photos / virtual storage of lost items - photo gallery
As you can see, it is in two languages, French and English, which only adds to the exotic feeling I get from visiting it. So what does it have to do with poetry? Nothing other than it could provide a great writing prompt--or two or three. Write about lost items from your past (and please resist the urge to write about the time you "lost" your heart). Write about one of the lost items on the site. Select a few of the French words and work them into a poem. Take a walk, or a ride, purposefully looking for objets perdus. Snap a photo with your camera or cell phone and write about the photo, rather than the item itself.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that each objet comes with GPS coordinates, which you can plug into Google Maps and be introduced to new places. Then you can people these places with your poetic imagination!

I tried a few exercises, and through a combination of things, I came up with:
La Reine Poète

On eBay I bid on a
box of old photographs
and win not knowing
the lives of someone's
lost relatives would
become mine by default
to shape and direct,
destroy, resurrect, to
manipulate. A world
conquered by the
queen of words who
has no life of her own.

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

The Poetry Friday Round-Up is being hosted Tabatha Yeatts: The Opposite of Indifference.

7 comments:

  1. Your poem is so sad, Diane. It's a good thing when your work drums up an emotion in your reader.

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  2. Just clicked over there for a few minutes.

    What a concept! Very cool.

    J

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  3. Thanks, ladies. Andy, tell the truth, you don't mean sad, you mean pathetic!

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  4. So many lost hubcaps...so many missing soccer balls! But they look so artistic, with the close shot and the scene shot, and the gps. ...But it just occurs to me...how can we say those items are LOST when we know so much about them and exactly where they are?!?!

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  5. Wow, so many lost items! What a great site to go to for inspiration. Diane, your poem is very powerful (it is not pathetic!). I've always thought there is something mystical about old photographs. They seem to have a beckoning energy or quality about them.

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  6. Mary Lee--to the original owner they are indeed lost, but to us they are objets trouves!

    Gisele--I wrote about some of my photos earlier in these posts: August 17, 2009 and August 7, 2009.

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