and she has, a sestina

and she has

 

ask for some help if you need it

and she has

an invitation will come forward that you’ll yes to

i started to hear the walls creak and i said lets go

what are you crying about

a different maker’s generic doesn’t work at all

 

it’s not about me at all

garcia could not get a hand on it

that’s what sound science is all about

and she has

an honor to get to go

perhaps schedule a massage or two

 

he can still get a lot better because he wants to

we sail a bit sometimes not at all

and i said lets go

keep putting forth effort and working at it

and she has

that’s what sound science is all about

 

what are you crying about

there will be happiness but a somber moment too

and she has

its not about me at all

he told her to keep it

it’s an honor to get to go

 

we’re ready to stop talking and just go

that’s what sound science is about

ask for some help if you need it

there will be a somber moment too

but sometimes not at all

and she has

 

and she has

to get to go

not at all

crying about

he wants to

need it

 

 

Source

MacInnis, Roberta. Runners Go Extra Mile for Boston. Houston Chronicle. 19 Apr. 2014. A1, A12

Minge, John. Gulf Recovery Efforts are Making Progress. Houston Chronicle. 19 Apr. 2014. B7.

Kaderka, Susan. Damage to Wildlife Remains Significant. Houston Chronicle. 19 Apr. 2014. B7

Creech, Jenny Dial. Happy With His Game. Houston Chronicle. 19 Apr. 2014. C1, C2

Harvey, Randy. Howard’s Postseason Attitude? It’s Super. Houston Chronicle 19 Apr. 2014. C1, C2.

Verdejo, Angel. Lee’s Magic Run Ends With Semifinal Loss. Houston Chronicle 19 Apr. 2014. C6

Duarte, Joseph. Thomas, House Obtain Conditional Releases. Houston Chronicle 19 Apr. 2014. C1, C8.

Bigar, Jacqueline. Horoscope. Houston Chronicle. 19 Apr. 2014. E7.

MacInnis, Roberta. Charter In The Caribbean. Houston Chronicle 19 Apr. 2014. L1, L3

Graedon, Joe and Theresa. E-Cigarettes May Not Help Smokers Quit the Habit. Houston Chronicle 19 Apr.                                                                                                                                                    

 

 Note:

Wow, that was tough. Here is my raggedy sestina. I found myself getting attached to certain phrases and with a limited amount of time. So there are multiple repeats here, especially of the title line. I worked with a small set of sentences, and mainly did erasures.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

This will be one of your most challenging Oulipost prompts! A sestina is a poetic form of six six-line stanzas. The end-words of the lines of each stanza repeat those of the first, but in a differing order that in each successive stanza follows the permutation: 615243. The entire sequence of end words is thus: 123456; 615243; 364125; 532614; 451362; 246531. All words and phrases must be sourced from your newspaper text..

studly homoconsonantism

for stud, no harem

 

Eden to so chosen a map:

red phase, ocean as icy

path. No doom stabs,

tipped, farm-pour,

city can game deacon.

 

Source

Falkenberg, Lisa. Cases Against Surgeon Show How Tort Law Fails. Houston Chronicle. 18 Apr. 2014. B1, B2.

 

Note:

This was a lot of fun. Like a lot of these, this was really an exercise in free association. I basically just wrote out the consonants and then took the words that jumped out at me, then filled out with the words that clanged from the words that first jumped out. I guess the moral is there is not truly free association. The finished product quasi- makes sense, I think.

 

Here is the root sentence: “Duntsch is an impaired physician, a sociopath, and must be stopped from practicing medicine.” The title is a similar treatment given to “first, do no harm”, which is also the first line of the article.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Choose a sentence or short passage from your newspaper to complete a homoconsonantism. In this form, the sequence of consonants in a source text is kept, while all its vowels are replaced. For example:

ORIGINAL: To be or not to be: that is the question.

CONSONANTS ONLY: T b r n t t b t t s t h q s t n
FINAL PRODUCT: As burnt tibia: it heats the aqueous tone.

Hoarded Questions: A Haiku Series

haikus, hoarded questions

 

1.

to battle insect

or rodent infestations

of the property?

 

2.

how is this going

to be brought to light- by smell?

by infestation?

 

3.

how much paper

in a person’s home is too much-

considered hoarding?

 

Source

Fraser, Jayme. Hoarding Law OK’d But Poses Quandry. Houston Chronicle. 17 Apr. 2014. B1, B10.

 

Note:

Based on the instructions and the limitations imposed by the form, today’s version is going to be somewhat more on the nose and in line with the actual article than is usually the case. I decided to return to the hoarding, which is an occasionally recurring theme. Two of the sentences I chose were questions. I made the other a question as well, as it seemed to fit with the minor erasures I did.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

The haiku is a Japanese poetic form whose most obvious feature is the division of its 17 syllables into lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Haikuisation has sometimes been used by Oulipians to indicate the reduction of verses of normal length to lines of haiku-like brevity. Select three sentences from a single newspaper article and “haiku” them.

Chimera's Egg: Yolk disagrees

yolk disagrees; manifest to affect Easter at first ways

 

For a week who is eggs-

and straight you- for

heightening with contact

of fiery and sometimes

very dejected eggs, loosen.

could?- to see eggs with eggs

closer to his own eggs-

may?- pop a good landslide

for eggs, eggs.

 

 

Source

Wire Reports. Berlusconi To Spend Time at Senior Facility. Houston Chronicle. 16 Apr. 2014. A2.

Nouns:

Morago, Greg. Celebrating the Egg. Houston Chronicle. 16 Apr. 2014. F1, F6

Verbs:

Bigar, Jacqueline. Horoscope. Houston Chronicle. 16 Apr. 2014. E5

Adjectives:

Creech, Jeremy Dial. Fiery Guard Could Tell a Title Was In the Air. Houston Chronicle. 16 Apr. 2014. C1, C3

 

Note:

This is one heck of a mixture. I had intended to start with something local, but nothing was that interesting, and the short piece on Berlusconi caught my eye. This is the first paragraph of an article about him, which I logically combined with a food column on (you guessed it) eggs, a horoscope (starting from the beginning which is Aries) and a sports column on the Houston Rockets.

 

The title is the title of the Berlusconi piece with similar treatment using a subheading for the egg piece, today’s horoscope and a subheading for the sports piece. I stuck with the rules, although I did change things like tenses and quantities to make it slightly less nonsensical.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

The chimera of Homeric legend – lion’s head, goat’s body, treacherous serpent’s tail – has a less forbidding Oulipian counterpart. It is engendered as follows. Having chosen a newspaper article or other text for treatment, remove its nouns, verbs and adjectives. Replace the nouns with those taken in order from a different work, the verbs with those from a second work, the adjectives with those from a third.

one name new, a prisoners snowball

one name new

 

I-

me!-

was

near

sense:

narrow

answers,

services.

americans

recover

issues,

cause

more

(six)

as

a-

 

 

Source

Fraser, Jayme. City’s Hoarding Proposal 8 Years Late for One Man. Houston Chronicle. 15 Apr. 2014. B1, B4

 

Note:

The prisoner’s constraint is surprisingly- constraining, especially because I limited myself to a single newspaper article as a source. It became clear that I wasn’t going to have a ton of words to work with. As is becoming a recurrent theme, not much time either. Sometimes the solution to being constrained is to add another constraint. I decided to integrate a snowball type scenario, up and then down again.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Imagine a prisoner whose supply of paper is restricted. To put it to fullest use, he will maximize his space by avoiding any letter extending above or below the line (b, d,f,g,h,j,k,l,p,q,t and y) and use only a,c,e,m,n,o,r,s,u,v,w,x and z. Compose a poem using only words that can be made from these letters AND which you source from your newspaper text.

legal feed

Legal feed

 

questions have been sued.

relief may employ

an ounce. if pigs

or your portions

do not file a written

size with the chicken

who issued this hamburger

by 10 am on the pound

next following the questions

of 42 herds after the

discount of demand

of this law and virus

 a default couple may

be taken against everything

 

 

Source

Blaney, Betsy. Beef Prices Sizzle to a 27-Year High. Houston Chronicle. 14 Apr. 2014. B1, B4

 

Legal Notices. Houston Chronicle. 14 Apr. 2014. B8

 

Note:

This is an integration of an article on beef prices in Texas with the one form of classifieds I could find in today’s paper, legal notices. I switched out all of the nouns. This has necessarily an agricultural feel, but hopefully a little broader.  

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Refer to the advertising section or the classifieds in your source newspaper. Create a poem by replacing all of the nouns in your chosen ad segment or classified listing with nouns from one article in the same newspaper. You may use multiple ads/classifieds, presented in the order of your choosing.

dance, clown, or we are led: a marriage song

dance, clown, or we are led

 

we are in a calendar, reclined

on ironweed or coriander and

we’d dine on cordial, éclair

and codeine. I’d declare

a weirder line or dare:

renewal OR decline in

carrion. no care, no narrow

rancor, no recoil. we rained,

an arid, Nordic colander.

 

 

Source

Out of respect, I will just say that a couple named Andrew and Caroline were featured in a way that fits the rules to a t.

 

Note:

This is a cousin of one of the prompts earlier, with the task to write a marriage song composed from the letters of the names of bride and groom. This is a really fun exercise and fit very nicely in the limited amount of free time I had today. My strategy is basically to get a set of words I like a lot and then to play around with them. The restrictions make for a lot of alliteration and internal rhymes which is not the worst thing in the world. There’s perhaps a strand of narrative here. Gravity seems to pull these poems in a somewhat odd direction, such that I felt weird about providing their full names. This is not meant to be a dark poem as much as a poem about dark people.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

An Oulipian epithalamium, or marriage song, is one composed exclusively with the letters of the names of bride and groom (bride and bride, groom and groom, etc). Visit the engagement or wedding announcements section of your newspaper and select a couple. Write a poem using only words that can be made with the letters in their name. You may choose to use first names only if you prefer anonymity or full names if you’re desperate for more letters.