February 21 Poem/Microstory Assignment

I decided to use a collection of quotes from the actor Paul Rudd to create a poem, speaking loosely “as” him. The tone of each of these quotes were variable- some humorous, some serious, but in sliding them together I think I created something of a pensive train of thought. The poem is as follows:

I can, and do, walk the street.
No one bothers me;
most people wouldn’t know who I am.
Oh, the weather outside is weather,
it blasts upon the streets,
it leaves me
(pun intended)
ruddy cheeked.
A dozen coffee shops all the same
venti is twenty
large is large- In Fact
tall is large and grande
is spanish for large.
venti (the lone italian) does not mean large
congratulations! scrawled on a paper cup
you’re stupid in three languages.
Living life in cities-
Alfred Uhry, the playwright,
surrogate father to me
would say,
‘If you’re Jewish,
it’s just in the marrow of your bones’
I live in New York still
and he does, too.
I’m sure that my wanting
to be an actor
had to do with a need
for approval.
A comedian I am not-
because I do not concern myself
(too much)
with jokes.
I think I’ve dealt with any kind
of trauma in my life
with humor.
I still am.

I decided to make this poem out of any quotes that really caught my attention. I found while working through them that this was more difficult to write than I had initially expected. My hope was that by picking an actor best known for comedy would make it easy to write a humorous piece. I still think it would be a good challenge for me to work on writing less serious pieces because I have never written anything very humorous, even if the material is light, it is always more sober. I did not change three of Rudd’s quotes nearly at all- the two at the beginning and the last because I think they are nearly perfect as is. I did add in my own words at a few points to create flow between the originally unconnected quotes. I also thoroughly enjoyed playing around with the punctuation and structure in general to change the meaning of the words at some points. All of these quotes were originally spoken, not written, which I think is more interesting to have to adapt into a poetic style. While this assignment was a unique experience, I do not feel particularly satisfied with the final product and I might try to do something similar with my own social media postings as was another option at some point.