Cloud Poems by Erin Mickelson

A poem forms like a cloud— thoughts rise and condense into words: alone, in lines, in clusters. Instability leads to something other: alike, but not the same. Stéphane Mallarmé adored the English language and its intrinsic otherness to itself. With syntactical prowess, he arranged abstract nouns and adjectives into conceptual metaphors. This book toys with the idea of a formula for a conceptual metaphor, based on an excerpt from Mallarmé’s Ouverture ancient d’Hérodiade—specifically the line, “the redness of this prophetic time”: The (subject = adjective + suffix —ness) of this (adjective) (noun) *To link lines together, add (verb) + as Using language taken from the scientific classification of cumulonimbus clouds, adjectives, nouns, and verbs are placed into the equation to create a poem. The typography reflects the formation of a cumulonimbus cloud, as text rises vertically before it dissipates.