Archive for the 'Constraints' Category

Apparently a poet is putting up a new form of poetry around Manhattan. He is calling himself “Nick Beef” which is a reference to an empty grave next to the grave of Lee Harvey Oswald.

(Click to enlarge)

The words in Beef’s dieku above aren’t just references to chess pieces but to actual moves that can lead to a checkmate.

(source)

more dieku (including one that attacks my 10th cousin)

As the days progress, I get more ideas. I believe I may actually do this. Some will be happy to know I am not going to be torturing anybody with a pseudo-screenplay, but I am at least going to attempt a real one.

Here’s my scriptfrenzy profile

There are people in my writer’s group who fear those moments when I get a weird idea. It usually means I’m going to subject them to some strange new form of writing.

I wondered this morning if I could write a full screenplay, where if it were acted out, it would fail miserably, but when read on paper, was hilarious. Kind of like I imagine that sample scene would be. Maybe others don’t find it as funny as I did — humor is hit or miss.

Script Frenzy only requires one to write 20,000 words. That’s a lesser amount than NaNoWriMo. And if my goal isn’t to create a good screenplay to perform, but a good screenplay to read, I think I stand a better chance of succeeding.

Of course, there’s the inverse. What I will call the omnivocalic, though I think there is a different word for it. Here are the 28 words which have an a,e,i,o and u. You’ll notice, perhaps, that only five of them also have a ‘y’. There are also about a dozen I can confidently define without going to a dictionary.

abstemious abstemiously abstemiousness abstemiousnesses abstentious adenocarcinomatous adventitious adventitiously amentiferous anemophilous antireligious arenicolous argentiferous arsenious arteriovenous autoecious autoeciously cavernicolous facetious facetiously facetiousness facetiousnesses garnetiferous sacrilegious sacrilegiously sacrilegiousness sacrilegiousnesses ultraserious

Back in May of 2001 there was a small disturbance in New York when Madame Tusseaud’s decided to add a wax statue of Arafat to their museum collection. The poets of Newspoetry.com were given a challenge to write a univocalic poem. I had never heard of univocalic poetry before then. My life was changed. However, I reached an impasse, as my brain had severe cramps coming up with words using only one vowel. Here’s the poem I wrote:

BAD!

Arafat Bad.
Wax Bad.
Bad Bad Bad!

Ban Wax Arafats!
Ban All Arabs!
Ban Ban Ban!

Considering my mental difficulties, I was quite pleased with the result. Naturally, I hoped all readers would understand I was attempting to capture the mentality of those who were protesting. The simple words helped to emphasize this commentary, which pleased me to no end. My poetic deficiencies looked intentional.

I’ve recently discovered a word-puzzle website where you can search for a list of words meeting specific constraints. Morewords.com Using this I have created univocalic word lists for a,e,i,o,u and y. Unsurprsingly, e is the longest list with almost 3500 words. Y is the shortest list with only 101. Writing anything that is understandable with the y-list is extremely difficult.

You try:

by byrl byrls bys cry crypt crypts cyst cysts dry dryly drys fly flyby flybys flysch fry ghyll ghylls glycyl glycyls glyph glyphs gym gyms gyp gyps gypsy hymn hymns hyp hyps lymph lymphs lynch lynx my myrrh myrrhs myth myths mythy nymph nymphs ply pry psych psychs pygmy pyx rhythm rhythms rynd rynds scry shy shyly sky sly slyly spry spryly spy sty stymy sylph sylphs sylphy syn sync synch synchs syncs synth synths syph syphs syzygy thy thymy try tryst trysts typp typps typy why whys wry wryly wych wyn wynd wynds wynn wynns wyns xylyl xylyls xyst xysts

Yeah. I know April is over, but I still have poetry on my mind.

I decided to post a couple more poems before the month closes.

I’ve been sorting through my electronic files of poems and discovered some I’d forgotten.
These are written by me. Both are constrained poems. The first one is a haiku. The second is a Jenny.

Dinner Conversation

Said the cannibal
to his friend: this pirate’s chest
is filled with treasure.

Categorizing the Dead

Zombies are the least functional;
Vampires more functional;
Corpses the most functional –
Disintegrating
Becoming

Fertilizer for vegetation.

a scary new form of poetry, mostly of my creation, with a little input from a fellow poet.

202

Congress;

The Prez.

210

Remem-
ber
…

or

Crockettt
Lives
!

212

Wall Street
and
Broadway.

314

The Gateway
to
the Cardinals.

636

Suburban growth creates
a second
phone code for St. Louis.

(I was going to use zip codes, but I was reminded that the collection of the entirety would be several thousand pages. Area codes are a bit more manageable.)

There are a couple reviews over at Amazon that talk about the sexism in this novel. I may need to add my own review to counterbalance them. This was written in the 1950s, and while the male characters from Earth are chauvinistic, it’s clear the author knows they are chauvinistic. A truly sexist novel is oblivious to the sexism of the characters. The female characters in the novel don’t universally accept the roles they are ’supposed’ to fill.

This same issue comes up in discussions of some of Robert Heinlein’s early works — viewed as sexist by many today, but the female characters are mostly strong, shown to be equally intelligent as the men, but forced to live in a chauvinistic society.

It can certainly be argued that the novel is anti-Collectivist. The back cover blurb describes it as a humorous parallel between Communism and bees, and that’s appropriate. However, I’d argue that de Camp goes beyond Communism, and if the book is intended as an argument for anything, it is an argument about the superiority of individualism over collectivism. There is a strong thread of Libertarianism that runs through Science Fiction, and Libertarianism is strongly individualistic, so this isn’t surprising.

This was the first novel I’ve read of de Camp’s, and he definitely displays a sense of humor in it. Encouraging me to search out some of his other books. It also reads like a novelization of a Star Trek episode; though de Camp wrote it a decade before the series appeared on television. Earth spaceship lands on primitive planet. Terrans have a philosophy of non-interference. They end up interfering. Chaos ensues. The fun lies in the details; and I left the book caring about the characters and wondering what happened to them.

I won three dollars yesterday in Powerball. It’s going to be reinvested.

Here’s my most recent Jenny. Too timely to try and get published anywhere local, and too local to get published anywhere else. (I did try one place.)

A Talent for Negativity

Another attack ad appears
in my phone messages
daily as the election
nears. Talent must fear
clairvoyants’

accuracy on Claire’s victory.

Day 2: 1,567 words.
Daily Average: 1133
Total: 2,267 words.

Note: In double-spaced courier (the most commonly requested format for novel submission) I’ve written 15 pages.

If I write 1100 words/day for the next 28 days, I’ll have written a total of 33,067 words.
If I write 1500 words/day for the next 28 days, I’ll have written a total of 44,267 words.
If I continue to double my word count every day, on the Ides of November alone, I will write over 3 million words. That is unlikely.

I have 800 books. Exactly.

I know there will be one or two readers of this blog who call this into question. Exactly? Are you positive there isn’t another book or two you can find, hiding in a box somewhere? In the back of a closet, underneath a bed?

Perhaps. But why should I look? I have exactly 800.

Of course, I did order 3 more from Amazon just yesterday, so this will be short-lived. (All three related to the Oulipo school of Potential Literature.)

Oulipo stands for “Ouvroir de littérature potentielle”, which translates roughly as “workshop of potential literature”. It is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians, and seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Other notable members include novelists Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, and poet and mathematician Jacques Roubaud.

The group defines the term ‘littérature potentielle’ as (rough translation): “the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy”.

A Missouri State Congressman
has proposed to declare
February Sixth each year
Ronald Reagan Day.
All in all…

I would rather be anywhere else.

I’ve created a new form of poetry.

I like playing with forms of poetry. Here are a whole bunch.

This table was created by William Gillespie, who was the founder of Newspoetry. It’s his fault, for example, that I even know what a homoliteral or an univocalic poem is, and my first attempts were published on Newspoetry. (follow the links.)

But before I discovered Newspoetry, Gillespie, and those forms, I enjoyed the Japanese haiku and tanka. This is because, for a long time, I’ve known how to count syllables. Rhyming and meter without getting singsongy is difficult. Counting syllables is easy.

But I was thinkng recently…why limit myself to 5-7-5 or even 5-7-5-7-7.

So I came up with a new structure. A total of 38 syllables, broken into 7 lines of prescribed length. You’re not allowed to change the number.

Here’s my first one (the line numbers aren’t necessary, but are there for scholastic purposes):

Title: A true story

1. I was under too much pressure; (8 syllables)
2. my nose began to bleed. (6 syllables)
3. My smart alecky boss asked (7 syllables)
4. if i needed a (5 syllables)
5. transfusion. (3 syllables)
6. (0 syllables)
7. I thanked him for his show of concern. (9 syllables)

A secondary requirement is the author of the poem must have a “good time” writing it.
I call the form, “Jenny.”

CBS tells us there’s a greater risk of death from coconuts, but they only provide tips for avoiding the shark attacks.

1) Don’t stand underneath a coconut tree during a hurricane. It won’t provide any protection. Seek shelter instead, you fool.

2) Don’t climb coconut trees without also wearing a helmet on your head. This will protect some, but you can still fall from the tree.

3) Don’t read underneath coconut trees. The law of gravity doesn’t need to be rediscovered. Newton did that years ago.

4) Stay away from all coconut trees if there is anybody named Gilligan within ten feet. (Or if you’re known as ‘Skipper’)

5) Convince your local grocery store not to place coconuts higher than five feet off ground level. (You might still break a toe, though).