puppy love, belle absente

Puppy love

 

You, Jacqui and him’d celebrate with KFC, and then go up (this was before zinc oxide, UVA)

and quick lay out and wish. Me: it was extra-agonizing to be July and five

in June, experiencing the frequent micronized TV, the block/body shows.

Zap, be extra smart, you’d say, your priceless heirloom just as quick to fade or giveaway,

to explain Ursula LeGuin and randomized just-worlds to one who’s five and frequent

and whose hospitalizations (infliximab) and even fingernails just say anti-quarterback

  

Source

Hoffman, Ken. Chick-Fil-A Pushes Ahead of KFC in Sales. Houston Chronicle. 26 Apr. 2014. E2

 

Roizen, Michael, & Oz, Mehmet. Accelerated Treatments for Crohn’s Show Results. Houston Chronicle. 26 Apr. 2014. E2

  

Note:

This was an instance where getting closer to the instructions actually helped. I started with the name “Spanky” who is the “Pethouse Pet of the Week” (I don’t fully understand why Spanky has an opinion about KFC, but that’s okay). Originally, I thought I was to build words from the entire newspaper, but that led to the paralysis that comes with too much freedom. I then understood that I was to get all my words from the article, but that was too little freedom, as Spanky was absolutely missing a few letters. So I compromised and took the article directly below, which as kind fate would have it was a medical column full of all those difficult to find letters. I didn’t start out with the narrative that emerged, but found that there were certain words that I really wanted to include and they set the narrative for me.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Beautiful Outlaw- Belle Absente: The outlaw in question is the name of the person (or subject) to whom the poem is addressed. Each line of the poem includes all the letters of the alphabet except for the letter appearing in the dedicated name at the position corresponding to that of the line: when writing a poem to Eva, the first line will contain all letters except E, the second all letters except V, and the third all letters except A.

Choose someone mentioned in your newspaper to whom to address your poem. Compose a beautiful outlaw poem following the procedure outlined above and using words sourced from your newspaper text.

not affirmative authority, a larded psalm

not affirmative authority, a psalm

 

there are no more fires in the

restroom true I continue to

be very confident in our position

 

in the litigation the data just isn’t

there you do have your critics

out there the earth is full of

your mercy not our business

 

our kids are not commodities

finally let the people decide

I wasn’t so sure about that very

modest there’s one side of me

 

that says to go ahead the people

should decide teach me your

laws I’ve noticed that they’re

exiting kids as quickly as they

 

accept them all it really did was

allow them the right to proceed

the halls are no longer like a party

  

Source

Falkenberg, Lisa. Not Sold On Abbott’s School Takeover Plan. Houston Chronicle. 25 Apr. 2014. B1, B7

 

Collier, Kish. Sports Authority Debt Lawsuit is Back On. Houston Chronicle. 25 Apr. 2014. B2.

 

Bible Verse. Psalm 119: 64. Houston Chronicle. 25 Apr. 2014. B8

 

Krauthammer, Charles. Court Makes Right Call on Affirmative Action. Houston Chronicle. 25 Apr. 2014. B9

 

Note:

I enjoyed this a lot. Given the relatively free range I had, I decided to limit myself to one section of the newspaper, the B section, which is usually where local news, opinions, and (I only just discovered this) a bible verse all reside. Two news items, an opinion piece, and the aforementioned bible verse gave me all I needed. There were no erasures, but I did play a little loose with the definition of sentence. In some cases what appeared to be two separate closures were separated by a colon, which I treated like a period. My starting two-sentence piece was “there are no more fires in the restrooms. The halls are no longer ‘like a party.’” Then, I just inserted the most promising of my building blocks between them, and so on and so on. I finished up by making the lines roughly the same length and organizing them in a way that I liked.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Larding aka “line stretching.” From your newspaper text, pick two sentences. Add a new sentence between the first two; then two sentences in the new intervals that have become available; and continue to add sentences until the passage has attained the length desired. The supplementary sentences must either enrich the existing narrative or create a new narrative continuity.

stop both are right, a homosyntaxism

stop both are right

 

stalling, they entice sadly

smudged, she hobnobs, almost

knows, I moved, just

entertaining, you see critically

 

entertaining, she signs just

smudged, you love almost

knowing, they click critically

stalling I list sadly

 

know?  they ask critically,

stall, she will be almost

smudged, I host, just

entertain, you buy sadly.

 

Source

Hoffman, Ken. Food and Reading Fans Will Love This Event. Houston Chronicle. 24 Apr. 2014. E1, E2.

 

Note:

I saw a lot of different ways of approaching this exercise. I started with my favorite sentence in the article: “stop, both are right.” This, as near as I can figure, parses as “verb intransitive, pronoun, verb transitive, adverb.” I decided to limit myself to other words found in the article that fit into one of these four categories. There were four each of intransitive verbs that I could find (and some are debatable), four pronouns, four adverbs, and a crap-ton of transitive verbs. I figured I would see how close to exhausting my list of transitive verbs I could come by shifting around the other sets of four. I am pretty happy with the result, although it’s far more repetitive than exhaustive. I may have said this already, but I like repetition.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Homosyntaxism is a method of translation that preserves only the syntactic order of the original words. To give a rudimentary example, if N=noun, V=verb and A=adjective, the outline NVA could yield solutions such as “The day turned cold,” “Violets are blue,” “An Oulipian! Be wary!”)

Option 1: Choose a sentence from your newspaper source text and write as many homosyntaxisms as possible based on that same variation.

Option 2: Complete a homosyntaxism of an entire paragraph or article found in your text.

couple's inventory, in order, unless (after Dear Abby)

couple’s inventory, in order, unless

 

pronouns, personal, ascending:

I, we, me, we,

you, you,

he, it, him, it,

he

 

nouns and substantives:

man, years, marriage, goal, dilemma, husband, track, time,

sex, times, year,

sex, times, life, couple,

sex, times, year, mind, business, days,

year

verbs:

have been, may be, ‘d had, married, is, is

keeps, have, has, informed, was,

do, think,

married, having, is, keeps, travels, is

gone

 

negations, descending:

not, not

 

adpositions:

to, for, of, in, that, only, that,

for, about, for, in, that, in, that,

for, about

 

conjunctions and junctions and miscellany:

a, but, this, a, a, and, and, a, a, what, also

 

numerals, no particular:

100, 30, 2013, 76, 30-plus, 76, 60, a

 

adjectives, ascending:

quite upset, sex, your, every, my, my, adequate, sex, normal, quite good, wonderful,

personal, perfect, our, normal

 

Source

Dear Abby. Couple’s Sex Life Is All About the Numbers. Houston Chronicle. 23 Apr. 2014. E5.

 

Note:

I didn’t have a lot of time, so was in the market for something short. As fate would have it, there was a disturbing, albeit relatively succinct question asked of Dear Abby today. The poem, as well as the question (and Abby’s unrecorded answer), is all about couples and relationships. Or rather, a particular approach to above.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Inventory is a method of analysis and classification that consists of isolating and listing the vocabulary of a pre-existing work according to parts of speech. Choose a newspaper article or passage from a newspaper article and “inventory” the nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, articles, etc. Bonus points for creative presentation of your final lists.

wellness departs from beneficient infinity: an antonymy

wellness departs from beneficent infinity

 

Ford periphery

will be nude

against an aberrant

regular-season snuggy

or emptied apart from

common division of

ease: moon-night, day.

 

Source

Feigen, Jonathan. Issues Return at Bad Time. Houston Chronicle. 22 Apr. 2014. C1, C5.

 

Note:

This was another fun one. The starting sentence was: “Toyota Center was dressed for the occasion, adorned with the usual playoff t-shirts and filled with rare levels of  electricity Sunday night.”

 

There are some words that don’t lend themselves well to opposites. For the title, I did the same thing. I wasn’t sure what the opposite of time was, but I think the title went in the direction of particular instance (“time”), which meant the opposite seemed to be “infinity.” “Ford” seemed like the opposite of “Toyota”, but your mileage may vary (see also “snuggy” as the opposite of “t-shirt”). Some words gave me plenty of options and I had fun playing around with different ones.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to: 

In Oulipian usage, antonymy means the replacement of a designated element by its opposite. Each word is replaced by its opposite, when one exists (black/white) or by an alternative suggesting antonymy (a/the, and/or, glass/wood).

Original: To be or not to be, that is the question.

Antonymy: To not be and to be: this was an answer.

Select a passage from your newspaper source text to complete this exercise.

women, dust, life's detours: a confabulation

women, dust, life’s detours

 

I let shame run rampant (justin

bieber hasn’t got a chance) no

one knew I had a child (a judge

in florida) more a rumor than a

fact (excuse me, judge) I didn’t

have my baby (for may fifteenth)

the time of facebook (driving

while intoxicated) I released her

from her shame (that’s cinco

de mayo) thirty five years is

too long (roll over) we don’t

operate in forgiveness (I’m not

doing this again) they’re more

than enough (to get flat)

 

Source

Cowen, Diane. Jakes Helps Women Navigate Life’s Detours. Houston Chronicle. 21 Apr. 2014. D1, D2.

 

Dustin. Houston Chronicle. 21 Apr. D8.

 

Garfield. Houston Chronicle. 21 Apr. D7

 

Note:

This is an intermingling of quotes from hes and shes. All the quotes from women are taken from the same article. The male quotes are taken from two comic strips from the same section of the newspaper. I did some erasures to smooth out and the conversation spilled from line to line. I quite enjoyed this process.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Craft a conversation poem using “he said/she said” quotes that you find in newspaper articles.

role plays a race

role plays a race

 

…wish those treatment would

explain how exactly the men

of the race would differ if

president were indeed mix of

the part what them would make

misbehavior say ok color is

definitely about this. of content

not skin. of I because from where

behavior sit which of the Obama

toward behavior would

need white…

 

Source

Pitts, Leonard. Race Continues to Play a Role in American Politics. Houston Chronicle. 20 Apr. 2014. B10

 

Note:

It was tough to find text that wasn’t so littered with non-nouns that it was remotely interesting. I picked this article, and a section about halfway through that seemed somewhat more promising than anything else I read this Sunday. The title was another lescurean permutation on the relevant portion of the title of the article.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Select a newspaper article or passage from a newspaper article as your source text. Switch the first noun with the second noun, the third noun with the fourth noun, and so on until you’ve reached the end of your text.