Next time I get an urge to step out of time and make the brain rigorously focus down so hard that my body goes into rigor mortis over task I’m going to try another abecedarian. But they hurt. But the can amaze.
They’re usually no elegant waltz, rather more like watching a tapdancer tap faster and faster, getting sure they will lose the pass, make a mistake but they don’t and keep going faster and faster until your applause can’t help but rise to meet it.
I remember Lynne Alsford at a TREE reading doing an abcedarian and then when everyone was holding their breath having recognized the form very late in the alphabet, she started to reverse it. Seriously it was like cirque de soleil.
I want to do that. But not now.
Spineless Books has a table of progressive forms and there’s so much to read. I love how the number poetry explained by example. Could that be put more transparently?
The melting snowball poem is even a pleasure.