I just performed Tzara's "How to Make a Dadaist Poem" as part of the Read Across America program today. For sixth graders, mind you. It's one thing to make a bunch of knowing adults cut up newspapers and giddily reduce themselves to the point of view of a kid; it's an entirely different matter to do this with kids. And let me say, kids are H I L A R I O U S... totally captive, 100% down with the method. It helped that I prefaced them with a step-by-step DAda approach; doing my best/worst Hugo Ball rendering of "Karawane", which is perfect gobble-de-gük for kids and adults alike. But THEN handing them scissors to make their own... man, whatta blast. There we were, snipping away, pasting random newspaper clippings onto a big sheet of paper, laughing, and fully enraptured! Just brilliant, those minds... grabbing letters from the bag and having at it. So cool. Too cool. I read the final product/poem for the class... hissing, trilling, piff-poffing the headlines and truncated words. So good. Bare in mind, that kid in all of us... some sly devil had snipped a bit about "boobs flapping", which led to all-out guffaws and chirps of delight. I won't forget this for a long time.
(I'm sluiced for muse jetport)
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