Winning

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. Part of that is the inevitable busy-ness that seems to follow me these days. Ironic, since I have had a lot of good news on the writing front. But first the busy-ness.

For the first time since moving here, I have a “real” job. I still am doing about 15 hours a week of consulting and contract work, but I also have a part time station in a physical, real academic department, where people introduce me as “the statistician.” It’s similar to my contract work, but it is also harder to slack off/leave everything til the last minute.

Jake is in school, and settling in. It’s good for him and for me. Other than him sleeping through the night, knowing I am dropping him off at 8 and am “free” til 11:30 is the biggest change in my life since he was born. He’s also developing his own little personality and attitude and that’s great. As I’ve said before, I will take all the terribleness that comes with being two if it also means he’s starting to be his own person. He’s surprising me with a new word pretty much every day, which is kind of cool.

Then there’s school. Last semester, I ended my second undergrad career, as my advisor thought I could handle grad classes and I had complete the equivalent of an English major. It was kind of bittersweet. I hear a lot about millenials and how awful they are supposed to be, but honestly, my classmates were for the most part great, and definitely a lot more together than I was, probably til 28. So this semester, I am enrolled in a grad level course, as “non-degree-seeking” while I wait the results of my application for an MFA program. (yes, I applied, re-taking the GRE and all). The class is interesting and exciting but it’s also a LOT of work.

So, that’s where we are in the non-writing piece of things. And, I will say this. I struggled and continue to struggle with figuring out what the balance should be. I am currently reading a book called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” which is probably fortuitous. It’s about some combination of stoicism and being true to your priorities which is exactly my problem these days.

I am doing my best to be a good colleague and be productive in my day job, but the top priorities really are Jake and Sherise, and the writing. And both domains are doing pretty well. As some of you may know, there was some early concern about Jake having some language delays, but that has been pretty much cleared up. His speech therapist says he’s actually now a little ahead of his language milestones. Pretty much every day is a new word (or a word applied to a new concept). Yesterday the word was “stuck”

And the writing. So, since the last time I posted here, I have won two (TWO!!) paying contests. The first, which they announced this fall, was with the national English honor’s society’s publication The Rectangle. That has since been published. Here’s the link (poem shows up on page 9):

http://english.org/sigmatd/pdf/publications/rectangle.pdf

I am pretty happy with this poem, although it isn’t aiming for anything really big.

 

The other award is a major one. It’s the annual poetry contest with the Southern Indiana Review. Here’s the link to the announcement. If and when I can share the actual poem, I will. But this is a poem I am very proud of and a big deal.

 

http://www.usi.edu/media/5601556/mohrresults2016.pdf

 

That’s where it’s at. Cross your fingers for me, re grad school. Official word is theoretically coming this month.

 

La Belle

After a long publishing hiatus, my poem “La Belle” was published a few days ago as part of the third volume of The Avenue, a special themed issue titled “Woman”. Here is a link to the Amazon page for it. There are a lot of great stories and poems here, and at 12 dollars, it’s definitely as much fun as 4 cups of coffee.

http://www.amazon.com/Avenue-III-Chris-Tarry/dp/0996914617

I just wanted to share a little bit about my poem and about what I think are the benefits of my current project of taking classes and getting geared up the take an MFA.

This poem was written as part of a poetry workshop class, run by the inimitable Karyna McGlynn, a year and a half ago. It was 15 or so really cool undergrads and me, sharing our work, helping each other get better, and learning a lot about poetry. Karyna is a successful poet and had a lot of great insights about the craft, but also the industry (if that’s the right word for such a non-industrial enterprise).

This poem is a good example. It’s an ekphrastic poem, which is something I wouldn’t have even thought of doing before this seminar and was originally written as an assignment for the class.

Of course, the first draft was pretty raggedy and that’s the other cool thing about workshop classes. Getting input from 16 thoughtful people (or even six thoughtful people and ten people who are obliged to pretend to be thoughtful) can only make it better. I am dramatically happier with the end result than I was with the first version. Thinking back, even the less pleasant or thoughtful of the classmates (and there weren’t many) still taught me SOMETHING over the course of the semester. 

The poem itself has just been published, so go check it out. The song that it is responding to is “Lady Marmalade”, by LaBelle (sound familiar?), which was Patti LaBelle’s vanity group from the 70s. It’s vaguely based on some actual experiences, from my time in Montreal in grad school, when I had a good friend who sung in clubs and did a very great cover of this song. I hope I’ve captured something of what the scene was like in Montreal for this kind of music, in this context. I also like to think it says something about the male gaze, which brings me back to themed issue.  Finally, and perhaps most of all, it’s about what lasts and what doesn’t last and how some experiences just exist outside of time.

In any case, check it out. The poem itself is unlikely to be such an experience for you, but you never know.

Real Life

Having recently spent seven hours in an urgent care clinic, I got to thinking about the things that draw me away from writing. Not just the things that take time away from anything I can carve out to be creative, but things that disturb the head space that I seem to need for anything remotely creative to come out.

It’s been a hell of a year and a half for writing.

Hurricane Jakey has been a blessing. My son is a very cool little person and I wouldn’t trade him for anything. But he’s been bad for my creative process and not just in a “I need to be in the right state of unhappiness to write well” way. I learned that I need more sleep than the average person to be anything other than a dreary zombie. I did not get a full night’s sleep for more than 11 months. I wanted to die. At least temporarily for like ten hours. The first night he slept through the night, close to his birthday, I felt like crying. Such a small thing I had taken for granted all my life. Going to sleep and safely assuming I’d be that way til my alarm went off. It was useful to know that it was possible to be too depressed to write, that whatever the optimal level of misery was for the creative process, it was less than infinity.

Everything flows from that. It was a hell of a year and a half for work, and I am only now digging out from under the various work projects I committed to and am behind on. The publications took a dip, the billable hours took a dip, and I have no doubt that I was not doing my best technical, professional writing. Or data analysis.

Oddly, my chronic health issue has been the least of my problems. Having Crohn’s Disease makes it always unclear whether you have a stomach flu or a flare or food poisoning. I’ve been blessed in general to be pretty good most of the time. My recent adventure turns out to have been, not a flare up as I originally thought, but E. Coli food poisoning. That coincided with my final paper for my lit class.

And speaking of class, it’s been an odd combination of a drag and really invigorating. It’s nice to have any contact at all with adults, but honestly, the fall semester, my first semester back, was not a lot of fun. It’s undoubtedly all what I put in, but I found myself doing the bare minimum of creative writing, even for class. I think the quality of what I produced was higher, but I just didn’t click with anyone in the class, or for that matter, my American lit class. This semester, my creative writing class was canceled, and I focused on the lit class and it was really great. Seriously, Post-colonial lit with Professor Aboul-ela is great and it seems to attract smart people.

Anyway, back to writing. It feels like something is coming unstuck. I hope that’s right. Now that I am less than 2 months behind on work and don’t owe anybody a term paper, I am feeling less stressed about everything and the writing is slowly coming back. Jakey starts day school in the fall and I am honestly looking forward to the extra 8 hours a week of absolute free time that I can fill how I choose.

I am working on a poem about castrating cows, which continues the theme I had earlier of farming accidents. Although, it’s not that different if you take the perspective of the steer.

Rejected by Whom?: Red Neck Poems

It's been a busy six months. I still don't know how stay at home parents get much done other than child care, but I have been writing a little here and there. I took another couple of courses that have just finished up, including intro to creative writing (which I took after, instead of before the slightly more advanced poetry writing workshop). I have been accepted into the creative writing concentration at U of H and next semester will be doing a Poetic Forms course in addition to post colonial lit. So, expect lots of limericks about colorism.

But the writing: quality feels like it's going up, despite the pretty low rate of quantity. I am submitting my stuff to somewhat higher profile journals, although I am never sure how to tell a good journal from a less good one, other than some look pretty awful. Submitting to a few contests here and there, which brings me to sixfold.org. It advertises itself as being all judged by poets and so in theory, the Sixfold process is a good one. Be judged by other poets and so many other poets that you are sure to come up with the “true” measure of your work, compared with others.’ I was a little skeptical because it felt a little gimmicky, but what the heck.

I submitted two poems and dutifully did three rounds of voting. One was a long and (for me) playful poem about the movie Live and Let Die and verbal games that couples play with each other. The other was a poem about a rural couple who are still together after a long time. Nothing earth-shattering.

 In general, the poems I read got better each round, suggesting that overall, the better poems were getting through.

My own poems made it through only one round of voting, so had a total of six votes. I had two 6’s (meaning, they thought my poems were the best of the six sets they read), I had two 1’s (my poems were the worst), and two 3’s. This isn’t exactly the perfect middle of the perfect scores, but it’s pretty close.

Being insecure, I started with the feedback from the two 6’s. It was constructive, thoughtful, and had suggestions for improvement. The 3’s were less positive, and while I didn’t agree entirely, they were written by people who had read and thought about what I wrote.

The 1’s I had saved for last. One of them had no comments at all. The other had this feedback, reproduced in its entirety: "Red neck poems with incorrect capitalization and punctuation do not appeal to me. Sorry, but writing a good poem is different than writing a good poem with bad punctuation and capitalization. Appreciated the themes with everyday life in them."

I think that kind of speaks for itself. I probably won’t do the sixfold thing again. It seems as much of a crap shoot as sending stuff to a particular editor. If it’s a journal I like, I at least know the editor has tastes that somewhat gel with mine.

“red neck poems”

Sheesh.

The finite universe of time, and enjambments

Since the last time I posted, the big news is that I am now a dad. Most people reading this blog already know this, but just putting it out there. Being a dad takes time. And energy. So, that's where the writing has been. I have slowly eased back into writing a few poems here and there. Not nearly as many as I was before Jakey came, but still some pieces. I have resisted the urge to write sacchariney odes to childish innocence, but perhaps that's a mistake.

So, the volume of writing is down, but I am actually pretty happy with the quality of the little bit I have been doing. Far fewer pieces that I am embarrassed by and a few I am a little proud of. Quality over quantity or lowering standards.

Nothing new on the publishing front, but I was happy to be shortlisted for the Fish poetry prize.

http://www.fishpublishing.com/2015-short-long-lists.php#ppls15

The feedback I got was that the poem was very nice but I really need to work on my enjambment. Ironically, this was a reworking of the first piece I used in my poetry workshop class last semester and my prof, Karyna, gave me the feedback- wait for it!- that I need to work on my enjambments.

So, I still need to work on my enjambments. I have since tweaked "some kind of record" somewhat, so we'll see if it finds a home.

Enjambments

beautiful, and nothing hurt

Just a quick update. An online ebook has published a poem of mine, "beautiful, and nothing hurt"

The outfit is called Caffeine Presse, they were formerly Wednesday Night Writes, and I am really happy with their treatment of the poem. It looks really nice on the page.

Here is the link to the e-book.
http://issuu.com/wednightwrites/docs/caffeine_presse_online2/1?e=9477927/9490655

My poem is on page 8.

This was one of those poems that was a long time in taking the shape it needed to take. It was originally a two page monstrosity, overly didactic, and kind of a download of only quarter formulated thoughts and unconsidered emotions. I had to get a lot of distance from it, and sometimes the best way to get distance from something is to hack it to pieces and build it back up.

The contrast between start to finish is pretty dramatic. I am happy with the end result and embarrassed by the beginning.

The title, incidentally, comes from the epitaph in Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse Five:
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

Ironically, enough, also about getting some distance.

moonlight, the serious moonlight

Amongst the rush of classes starting, I had another poem published.

I called it "moonlight, the serious moonlight" and, unsurprisingly, it was published in an online magazine called The Moon Magazine. I wrote the poem a few months ago, and there it sat. Moon had a call for poems and writing on "the shadow knows/facing the dark side" and about dealing with your own shadow.

The poem seemed to fit, so I sent it in.  Here is my poem. I was listening to a lot of David Bowie:

http://moonmagazine.org/rich-thompson-moonlight-serious-moonlight-2014-08-30/

Also, check out the whole special issue, a lot of nice, dark writing. They also have a lot of older themed issues as well.

Everybody needs an editor

Not much new on the writing front. I am working on my novel.

The poetry is there, just waiting. I recently submitted and got accepted a poem at Three Line Poetry, which, ironically enough, publishes only three line poems. The poem was originally 6 lines, which is pretty short for me, but I condensed it down to its essence, and the result was pretty good, if I say so. I originally had a title for it, but with three lines, you don’t get a title. The title was “but gin is not like love.”

You can see it here (It’s in free issue 27): www.threelinepoetry.com

I also just finished an essay for the undergrad English class I am taking, that had a two page limit. I have honestly never though of myself as being especially wordy- I usually struggle to fill the time, but in getting things to fit, it was amazing how much of the first draft could be cut or streamlined without losing the gist.  I was reminded of my oulipost experience earlier this year.

I sent something to Three Line Poetry a year or so ago, and it got turned down. Looking at those three lines now, I could have said what I wanted to say in one of those lines.

I’m not about to cancel my cable and go live in the woods. But at least in terms of writing, I still have a way to go in getting rid of useless clutter.

The Summer of My Content: Random Thoughts on Happiness and Creativity

It’s been a while since I have put anything on my blog. That reflects, in part, some recovery from the month of Oulipost as well as the vagaries of the summer cycle of work and play. I have had a large clump of revise-and-resubmit requests on my academic work; and my better half and I have been traveling and just spending more time together. My running is getting more consistent, and I am just all-around busy. But that’s not the only reason the writing has taken a back seat. To be honest, I have gone through patches of far more productive writing when I have been far busier in real life.  And far more stressed.

 The novel is in stasis. The story in my head hasn’t moved forward from where it is, several chapters ahead of where it is on paper. Poems are coming out roughly once every three weeks.

 A friend asked me if I write love poems. The answer is in general no; certainly not poems that anybody would call love poems. I can only speak for myself, but it’s tough to write happy poems that aren’t incredibly embarrassing. I don’t think I am alone here. I recently read a journal that was a collection of poems about parenthood (NOT the surprisingly good fatherhood anthology). What struck me about the poems was how many were just awful. Page after page of what boiled down to “My child is a precious gift”, “I love my child” and/or, at best, “being  a parent is a lot of responsibility.” They were all like having a conversation on the elevator with an excessively friendly stranger. There’s probably something original that could be written on those themes, but I can’t think of what it might be.  So love poems? Not so much. It’s not just that I have been relatively lucky in that department; it’s that I’ve been really blessed and most of my regrets involve things I’ve done, not done to me. Guilt-riddled writing seems even more depressing than love-struck writing.  I don’t do either well, and I suspect most people don’t either. Love poems often seem like things best kept to oneself.

That seems to be true of “happy” poems more generally. When I look back at what I wrote as a teenager, the really embarrassing stuff that wasn’t all just angst plopped onto the page, was all various odes to love. A few were angsty odes to love, which may be worse.

I originally started writing seriously as a way of working through some bad things that had happened. Once I could get past the initial output of self-pity, some of the things that came out were things I could be proud of. Even now, the stuff I write that I feel the best about are all about dealing with some fundamental and ultimately sad and/or disappointing facts of life. Other people can do whimsical or humorous and God bless them, but that is not me. My recent experiences with Oulipost loosened things up a little bit in that direction, but “lighthearted” is a difficult thing to force if it’s not coming. It happens, and I’m glad when it does, but I can’t count on that (and probably shouldn’t).

All of this is a long way of saying things are pretty good these days, and that may not be great for my writing. These things also come in cycles, and I am about to embark on some anxiety producing projects that are likely to bring me back down to my not-so-happy place.  In the meantime, I’m carving out time to write and hoping for something like the best.

A day late, and a dollar. My exit Oulipost interview

In which I revisit the initial Oulipost questions, and put them into the past tense with my own spin.




What was the most exciting part about Oulipost?


It was really fun to play around with different forms and be a little less structured in the content I produced. While being more structured in specific things that needed to be done each day. Given that I only moved to Houston in the last year, obsessively scanning the local paper was a pretty good way to get a feel for my new home.


Now that I have had time to read other people’s work, I am really impressed by what other people did with the prompts and the different ways they responded. Oulipost is completely new to me, and it kind of freed me up. I have been playing around a bit with applying some of the forms to other texts, and it’s really cool, what comes out.

What was the LEAST exciting part of Oulipost?



I am new to this approach, and while I think it was good for me, there were lots of “Crap! What do I do with THIS?” moments. Scary is different than exciting, for me.



Even less exciting was the commitment in terms of time. April was a bad month in terms of free time. I suspect any month would have been just as bad. The only good month to do something is the month you don’t have to.



What did you learn about writing experimental or found poetry?


I wasn’t aware of how many constraints were possible! It was challenging many days, but what was surprising was that the constraints produce far more in the way of creativity than I ever thought. I was really impressed by what other people could do.


The other thing I learned, more generally, is something I probably should have always known, but that it’s easy to forget. You get out what you put in. When I didn’t have much time to work on things, there was never a poem I was really proud of. Inspiration seems to work best in the context of either a lot of excess time, or a lot of hard work, or both.



FPR: What did you learn about source  material?


I did best when I could sit in the coffee shop, pen in hand, and mess around with the actual physical, literal Houston Chronicle. I can understand why the morning paper was such a ritual for so many people for so long, and I do think a lot gets lost in the translation to digital, at least in terms of the sense experience.


I tried to focus on the local sections of the newspaper, or the sections with the most regional inflections, like sports. This felt a little more general. There were some national stories I couldn’t resist, but I was worried that too many of these would make things generic.



FPR: Who is your- ?


I’m still going with Burt Reynolds, or perhaps Sterling Archer.

after addam: agenda

after addam: agenda

story: bear born,

rabbits made hush/

dead/away. happy,

 shit-don’t-stink

 

tomorrow’s agenda:

one happy touch

  

Background:

It appears that I have the found poetry bug, although I also have the “not doing anything productive with creative writing every day” bug. It’s a competition between my better and worse instincts. It’s probably fitting that I used Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam novel as the source for this found poetry exercise. I kept it short and simple.  I decided not to add any additional words.

 

 

Take the closest book to you. Open it to page 56 paragraph 1, line 4 and pick three random words.

 

Then open the book to page 107 paragraph 3 line 2 and pick three random words.

 

Now flip to a random page and find some dialogue. Find one word used to convey what a character is saying. It CANNOT be the word "said".

 

Invert the number of that page (321=123), and find an adjective and a subject

 

Now go to the last page and pick one word from each paragraph, line 3. One of them must be a verb.

 

Now write something with it. A six word story. A poem. Short story. A novel.

 

You have the option of just using those words or adding others with them.

 

BUT, you must use all of the words you found during this exercise in some capacity. It can be the plural or a different tense of the world, but it must have the original root.

 

Share what you wrote with us on our twitter @dzancbooks

 

thirty is the loneliest number

thirty is the loneliest number

 

food is clearly part of the reason, Pam,

cause resentful displeasure (you you know):

f-bomb. Except it’s not my club;

 

mandibles, calm as amylase, self-

cleaning (parents);

 

                              hard as balls,

recyclable, an arid, Nordic

colander: a default couple, near

sense: yolk, considered hoarding.

 

red phase: and she has content, not

skin. Justin Bieber, moon. Perfect,

our normal.

 

                    smudged, your mercy,

not our business. Ursula Le Guin

vaunteth not herself. Australian

mariachi-rap. we’re electronic

               

                   

Note:

The last post of the month, a compliation of the earlier poems. I wasn’t sure what constraint to put on myself here, but I decided to sample my poems for the month in order, picking favorite phrases, words, lines, or punctuation.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Conclude the project by writing a poem that incorporates words and lines from all of your past 29 poems.

huh, Canada Dry

huh, macs

 

the biography here is attempting to criminalize

epitaxy. integrate: we’re electronic, with

a more appropriate vacuum of hundreds of

victims, charges and accounting practices

Houston is approximate to swindling a false

space that described itself as a victim;

question ethical standards for all firm and

inaccurate innovations if the allegations are true

 

Source

Wermund, Benjamin. 2 UH Professors Accused of Scam. Houston Chronicle. 29 Apr. 2014. A1, A11B3.

 

Note:

The goal was to produce an oulipost that looked like an oulipost, but wasn’t. Fortunately, this article had a lot of great words I scrambled around at random. I am still not 100% clear on what epitaxy is, but I’m glad it exists.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

The name of this procedure is taken from the soft drink marketed as “the champagne of ginger ales.” The drink may have bubbles, but it isn’t champagne. In the words of Paul Fournel, who coined the term, a Canada Dry text “has the taste and color of a restriction but does not follow a restriction.” (A musical example is Andrew Bird’s “Fake Palindromes.”)  Be creative, and write a poem sourced from your newspaper that sounds like it’s been Oulipo-ed, but hasn’t.

a melting snowball oulipost

 

any given

 

entertainment,

(thanksgiving):

mariachi-rap,

Australian

variation/

everyday.

winning

asleep

wheel

will

sun

da

y

 

Source

Horswell, Cindy. Festival Gets Off to a ‘Good’ Start. Houston Chronicle. 28 Apr. 2014. B1, B3.

 

Note:

This may or may not be cheating, but I was really happy with the result. Not just because it looks like an ice-cream cone. The photo in the original article drew me in, and the progression turned out to be a really nice mélange.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Melting Snowball: A text in which each word has one letter less than the preceding one, and the last word only one letter. From your newspaper, select a starting word, and then continue adding words of decreasing length from the same source article or passage. Challenge yourself further by only using words in order as you encounter them in the text.

rational lapdance: a sonnet

rational dance: a sonnet

 

birthday has been charged with a felony

according to the documents she

refutes in a substantive way

 

she vaunteth not herself

 

you baby happy birthday

long and is kind charity

property but only temporarily

drugs though prison officials say

 

the rich are actually doing well

 

and the other students yelled

it’s difficult to hire and retain guards

mere mention of unequal

hoarding disorder like this fall

dance according to court records

  

Source

Lezon, Dale. Lap Dance Lands Teacher in Hot Seats. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B3

 

Editorial. Feeling the Heat. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B6

 

Bible Verse. 1 Corinthians 13:4. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B6

 

Krugman, Paul. Economist Exposes U.S. Myth of Meritocracy. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B7

 

Szymanski, Jeff, Frost, Randy, & Steketee, Anti-Hoarding Ordinance Stigmatizes Mentally Ill. Houston Chronicle. 27 Apr. 2014. B7

 

Note:

I limited myself to the B section of the newspaper, as that’s where all the fun is, and when I am on a limited time budget, it’s the best place to find stuff. I like how it came together. I did some minor jiggering to make it fit (tenses, genders, and the like).  

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Create a 14-line sonnet sourced from lines from your newspaper that is divided according to the first five digits of the irrational number pi – that is, into stanzas of 3, 1, 4, 1 and 5 lines. As with the preceding sonnet assignment (see April 14) you may interpret “sonnet” as formally or as loosely as you wish.

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.