It's an interesting challenge, writing for professionals who share a discipline with you. The credibility hurdle is high, the novelty hurdle is even higher and in the case of technical professionals (engineers, scientists, programmers...), the cynicism hurdle is usually insurmountable. So I'm grateful that I had my poetry background to call upon to help me.

Scoop up your jaw. Three primary objectives of poetry -- at least the variety I write -- served me well here. Start with a relentless desire to "make it new" (after Pound), add a developed need to keep things real (to find "ideas ... in things", as Williams dictated) and top it with a joy at investing hours into putting the "best words in the best order" (Coleridge), and you have my approach to characterizing a somewhat unique spin on a particular project management situation.

It also helps that the material I was presenting was heretical (I was promoting scrapping a most beloved project planning and control tool: the Gantt chart). This seems to lend itself to a poetic approach for some reason.

This isn't to say that what I presented was poetry, but that having poetry inside me made it easier to find the words and the way to deliver what I knew was a meaning message. Think about it: how often to you turn to poetry to do your expressing for you? Whether it's greeting cards, song lyrics, quoting the masters, or composing your own verse, you probably rely on poetry more than you realize. What's wrong with extending that reliance into the workplace?

How can you use the poetry in your bones today?


David Vincenti
Advisor, Center for the Performing Arts at DeBaun Auditorium
www.debaun.org; www.davidvincenti.com