The Poem is the Research

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I.

the poem is the research &
these bars are the method

I said what I said to scholars
triangulating circles as their method

I said what I said to
switch up the flow, technique & method

for how we come to know 
the nameless hunger of loss as method

my lines aided & abetted
the murder of their method

forever indebted to poets and MCs
I sweated at 16 / writing rhymes as their method

Listen: its spoken words on hot mics,
rhymes tight, the body is a breakbeat method

that channels the Godself
inside the fractured skull of method

testify / witness / pray / 
sing / worship / as method

holy & whole, we
remix, collage, mosaic method

take to the mic at night poet
it’s all just a moonlight method

it’s the why to the how 
to the 1, 2, & we don’t stop method

forgiveness is a eucharist
on the tongue of this method

this poem is the slant of the
sun through stain glass method

so spit poem as research, poet,
these bars are the method

II.

this poem is searching for itself
in the transcript 

it’s coding itself 
into colorless containers of category 

it’s apologizing for the lack 
of citations in its hands 

it has come empty & longing 
for peer review

in a special issue where 
it will die behind a pay wall

the corpse of this poem 
is hanging from the window 

of someone’s dissertation
on the eve of their defense 

it’s all rot & bone 
& teeth & spit 

this poem, a contortionist
bending itself into spaces

that are indifferent to the life 
of the poem, to the poet

this poem is trying so hard 
to be more than a poem

but it does not know how to
undress for anyone other than itself
  

Poetry as Method or / Letting the Poem Speak for Itself

In qualitative research, there are many ways to employ narrative inquiry and its variations, including poetic inquiry. But one form of (re)searching especially interested me: the poem itself as research. The poem as method. I’m interested in the poem as a way of intentionally, systematically, and reflexively rendering experience through a structured system of linguistic representation. For me, poetry offers opportunities to theorize, abstract, and know more deeply. Spoken word is a truth-telling form. I first began to understand this when a student performed a spoken word piece about gentrification in his city. The poem questioned, theorized, and made an argument using lived experience as data. It had all the qualities that teachers of writing want in traditional research papers. Yet, our impulse to explain is great. As teachers and researchers, we have been trained to do this:

our voices hover, linger,
always waiting to interject
like a butterfly caught     between
winter and spring

What if we could suspend that desire to control meaning? What if we treated the poem not as an object to analyze, but as the analysis itself? This particular audio poem was born from my own attempt to let go of this control,

to let the poem speak for itself—
and yet, here I am again:
the researcher, explaining,
genuflecting in the footnotes,
covering myself
with a fig leaf of citations,
the nectar of explication
dripping from my chin

Sonic Poetic Inquiry

Poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2020; Prendergast et al., 2009) is an arts-based methodology. Sandra Faulkner (2017) defined poetic inquiry as “the use of poetry crafted from research endeavors, either before a project analysis, as a project analysis, and/or poetry that is part of or that constitutes an entire research project” (p. 210). This study attempts to enact all three, not just on the page, but in three-dimensional space through the use of sound. My compositions include:

• Audio poems made from samples—interviews, focus groups, archival performance recordings
• Audio poems about research process, methodology, and theory (like this one)
• Audio poems that are research, standing alone as data and analysis

Faulkner's phrase—poetry as/in/for inquiry—is a guiding frame, but I wanted to remix and complicate the distinction. What if poetry moves through different modes of inquiry and representation? What if it loops back and forth across those categories—resisting location like a quantum particle in two places at once, never definitively at one point in space or time until observed? Each mode is here. And none is separate from the others.

From Erasure to Creation

Anthony Keith Jr. and Crystal Leigh Endsley (2020) introduced “Blackout Poetic Transcription,” a method rooted in Hip Hop pedagogy, critical race theory, and aesthetics like layering, rupture, and flow (Rose, 1994). This work inspired my own sampling process, where fragments of audio are transformed through acts of omission and erasure.

I took a Sharpie to the sounds,
left only the remnants.
what’s left is everything

Meaning emerges not only in what is preserved, but in what is strategically removed. The results are new compositions, research poems that sound within and beyond the waveforms.