Stanza 1: Walking by writing her name using streets in the shape of letters Stanza 2: Apology = a walk she took in her hometown Stanza 3: Walk the crease created by folding a map Stanza 4: Walk turn right Stanza 5: Memory of street names Stanza 6: Walk asks a stranger at every corner whether to turn left or right Stanza 7: Following the walk of another (ala stalker) Stanza 8: Pointing to a random spot on the map to walk at Stanza 9: At a bar after her walk Stanza 10: Walking her theoretical daughter’s name Stanza 11: Re-walking Stanza 12: Personifying her message as a vagabond
Most of the stanzas (1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11) are walking experiments. While reading them, I don’t see a collage. What I see are possible walks I could do. In a way they respond to Phil Smith’s criticism of Rebecca Solnit’s history of walking, that it is too focused on writing and not walking. Pedestrian Studies invites the reader to enact the poem and because of this it is more connected to the tradition of radical walking and the contemporary derive than walking pieces that focuses too much on the aesthetic of the writing.
Although Cruz provides the motivations for what she calls her attempts to make poetry ordinary and the motivations about how it happens, it isn’t clear how it is produced.