Last week we brought you some inspiration from our 2024 Life As Rehearsal For the Poem and Poetics As Cosmology course, and this week we have something from a course from earlier this year to help get your creativity flowing and your neurons firing during and after the Poetry Postcard Fest. It’s a Personal Universe Deck.

Taken from Michael McClure’s 1976 lecture at Naropa, from the book Talking Poetics, a Personal Universe deck is a remarkable tool for composition, divination, for grounding one’s self back in the meat-space of HERE.

You can get the full set of rules for creating your own deck here, but they include using words to exemplify your past, present and (ideally) your future, as well as making sure that the words reflect both your good and bad side. They should be root words that are reduced to their most concrete, original, basic grammatical structure and should be easily divided into categories of SIGHT, SOUND, TASTE, TOUCH, and SMELL.

Once you have your deck you can use it whenever you lose track of yourself, and want a reminder of those parts of yourself that drive you forward. And if you’re interested in other materials or signing up for the Fall session of Life As Rehearsal for the Poem and Poetics as Cosmology, you can find out more here: https://paulenelson.com/life-as-rehearsal-for-the-poem-larfp-and-poetics-as-cosmology-2025/.