Here’s the exercise:

Pretend you’re taking furious notes as the speaker at the front of the room drones through her PowerPoint presentation. You will impress those around you, and at the coffee break, they will point you out across the room to their friends. “That guy took notes during every talk like he was trying to write down every word.”  Not too far from the truth, because here is what you were actually doing.

Listen for an instant, and write down what the speaker just said, as much as you can remember, word for word. Listen to what he says next, and write that down, and so on. Don’t try to memorize or retain what is being said, just listen, jot, listen, jot, like swimming the breast stroke but sucking in breaths with your ears, not your mouth, for your pen, not your lungs. Don’t try to make sense of what you’re writing, and by all means do not edit. Get it verbatim, but put in a period if it seems like a good place for one. The result should be something like the following an example, jotted down from an oral presentation at a  wetlands conference, about maintaining a highly managed wetland in Wisconsin.

“They have both tractors and these / individuals travel so kind of keep that in mind./ In 2011, the left hand / inundated important things/ windrows of hay are left out / these so just be aware and / fires created by that equipment itself / at least I think it has / to various types of forbs / just to name a few out there./ The major emphasis of the Killsnake plat / short-eared owls out there / and turkey vultures through time / the cutting out there doesn’t mean they can / get out there over the last 10 of 15 years./ Species what I used to do out there / on Killsnake itself and so the property / is changing with the times.”

“Killsnake” is the name of the property, poetic in itself. The repeated occurrence of “out there” was habitual to the speaker, a phrase he sprinkled throughout the last part of the sentence, in much the same way that some people repeatedly interject “you know.” It was a bit annoying, but it also kept us focused on the otherness of this place, far removed from a conference room in a big city.

Most of what you jot down will be gibberish, but occasional pairings work well together.   “In 2011 the left hand / inundated important things.”  The fragments also tend to carry the general direction of the talk. Reading the Killsnake jottings above, as jumbled as they are, you can still sense a transition from two sections of the talk:  the first one about activities undertaken on the Killsnake, and the second about animals observed on the property.

Aside from the obvious reason — to combat boredom — I do this because I’m fascinated by the way the duration of my memory — 10-20 syllables — and the natural rhythm of language work together to create snippets of what can be read as free verse.  The natural extension of this exercise is to mess with it, taking a word out here, switching the order of two phrases there, but above all, trying to discover or create a meaningful poem.