Contexts

Think about your favorite poem. If you don’t have one, think about your favorite book, movie, song, TV show, art piece, whatever. Where did you find it? Who were you, then? Did you pick your favorite book off a library shelf and take it home with you? Did you read it all in one go on the floor at a bookstore? Did you hear your favorite song at a party, in the background of a TV show, or did you download it before listening to it because you knew it was by your favorite artist? Do you have a picture of your favorite art piece saved on your phone? Is it your lock screen? Is it better in person?

I went to an English Undergraduate Association event where we made stickers out of cut-outs from old books and art magazines. I picked up a vintage (2008) edition of R2 and, as I flipped through it, was struck by two things: (1) the magazine had no visual art component, and (2) there was a poem, titled “V. Credits,” about end credits, at the very end of the magazine, right before the contributor biographies. I was so struck by how perfect the poem was, and how perfect the placement was (I thought at first that they were literal “end credits” to the magazine) that I almost got emotional over it, so I cut it out of the magazine to make a sticker out of it.

It was only after I cut it out that I realized what a horrible, violent act I had performed--attacking this artifact of Rice history, slicing this poem out of its home, ditching the page number, the author’s name, cutting off the arteries that had once fed life into the poem. While I’m sure that other, intact copies of the 2008 edition of R2 exist somewhere else in the world, this copy will never be the same again, and this poem will never know its home again. I was almost compelled to glue it back into the magazine.

I didn’t, but hopefully I can resurrect this poem and give it a new home here. I was moved by it in the magazine; who says that someone else may not be moved by it in the blog?

Written by Rynd M.