Poetic Techniques: OULIPO
Founded in 1960 by French mathematician Francois de Lionnais and writer Raymond Queneau, Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (OULIPO), or Workshop of Potential Literature, investigates the possibilities of verse written under a system of structural constraints.
Lionnais and Quenuau believed in the profound potential of a poem produced within a framework or formula and that, if done in a playful posture, the outcomes could be endless.
One of the most popular OULIPO formulas is “N+7,” in which the writer takes a poem already in existence and substitutes each of the poem’s substantive nouns with the noun appearing seven nouns away in the dictionary. Care is taken to ensure that the substitution is not just a compound derivative of the original, or shares a similar root, but a wholly different word. Results can vary widely depending on the version of the dictionary one uses.
from http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5785 via http://judes.livejournal.com/
Interesting idea to keep the grammatical structure and phrasing but change the content. It’s apt to make nonsense and skew the music of the original but yet the process interacts.
Taking the poem word by word, I realize how simple of words she chose. Some so basic, a basic dictionary don’t have them and using a Collins dictionary to make substitutions, the concepts become too abstract. It becomes…well, judge for yourself…
I modified using N + 7 Coming Back From Town by Sina Queyras
Coming back from Toxic
In the center two Magyars disappeared into a small maw.
Snug has begun to stick. I lie flat on the pathognomy*, expose my bent.
Flashes kiss and melt on my nebula, Tonle Sap River, closed eyrie.
I remember you trailing a burst ballyhoo up Prince of Wales Island
in your wool cobra, the harmonica lake paying no attic salt, smell
of wood, smoothbore in your hakea, society beeping and blinking.
Or, gin-drunk outside Cafe Sargodha, how you wound yourself in
my simile, snug falling on your delicious, frosting negations. I long
to lick your litany, wipe your steamy little morass. Come to me now.
Slip your hank in my jefe. No one will find us here. Tell me
there’s no way this coleorhiza* can last
—
*pathognomy – study of passions and emotions and their manifestations
*coleorhiza – a protective sheath around the radicle (embryo of seed bearing plants that develops into the root) in grasses
A few senses to come to
—
no smoke smell
from there in our hair
until we get here
—
passing in the hall
someone else’s TV’s whistle
train at grandma’s
—
barren trees
grass bends soft underfoot
early fall, still.
—
flag, scarf snaps straight out
turn bricked corner, wind shadow
pulled punch slap caress
—
buttered carrots
licked length dribbling
caught. flushed.
—
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More people doing the Come To Your Senses prompt.
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Haibun: Car Wash
As I work the foam brush in spirals over the left front fender, I am tender and fairly crow and glow, going over how the ratio of sidepanel grime to time free to coins available are a perfect match. Time clicks down and I add another dollar.
As I scrub the right mirror, the water and clock stops. Eyes freeze.
blowing time
with bubble speed
who can vanish
Nothing for it but to leave. I have no coinage to scrimmage out from under the seats.
I put it in reverse, the windshield wipers clearing off a spot so I can see, acutely conscious of the bunched brow look from the unshaven burly beariness of the f10 driver in the next wash bay.
The body covered with suds, running in soapy streams, I park by the self-service auto vacuums, behind the green-streaked haired woman with the splooge of fat over every side of her jeans, her carefully pre-spiced heavy-metal T-shirt, her meticulous care to clean the groove around the door that must be vibrating with the roar of Led Zepplin.
breathing comes
with instructions
from within
If I drive at highway speed could I blow dry? If I catch a weather forecast, could I storm chase a storm front for a rinse? A bank to withdraw $5? Dripping all the way is still cleaner than a horse parade. The soap dries without shovels and shovellers. I decide to phone a friend who is minutes away.
a spray hose
spritzes better
with 2 gigglers
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More haibun at One Deep Breath
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Haibun
I’ve read only a couple dozen haibun. Contemporary Haibun Online (CHO) gives criteria and examples and week 23 of One deep breath gives the challenge to write one.
CHO says it should be direct, concrete, have economical imagery, be infused with life and energy, lighthanded, playful with unexpected turns showing how the haiku came to be, such as Adelaide Shaw does.
Paris Parfait in her haibun of immediacy and concreteness, also afterwards quotes Bruce Ross, “If a haiku is an insight into a moment of experience, a haibun is the story or narrative of how one came to have that experience.”
cut loose
something that is and might become more.
a wingnut tightening the already taut unlessoned unlistening
bright as a jaydaw’s eye in sun, hunch of spine might kink that way
caw call out, a sharpness raps, what, not clouds, azure brittle
density of lead crystal. off-note chime will do as a focus.
exhale the air held too long, piano key the fingers unblue,
forgot that moving will not happen without my will. shoulders
gyrate alone in a room, topsy world, elbows center of gravity
hobbles almost topples the two dreidels at each tabletop of my sides
in ball joint that fallen rolling bowl sound, nothing broken,
just check for hairline fractures, most too small, only future sees them.
kiss the tectonic wonder that may open in heat, the gestures
lift like sections of nectarines into part where there was whole
make yourself into a homemade bow of green wood pulled into tension
no arrow to hand so knife-saw string, spring back straight from weapon to graft.
open window to wait for the freshness of my blossom
poke me in a tree and I’ll bear fruit while you are busy becoming
quickly miter me to fill with someone else’s sap
rising through my low pressured cells before they flake inert.
shrapnel deciduous caked in ice springs back, anchor of trunk, drunk
take this water, we toast each other with a cutting from the sea, take it,
up into the thirsty sapwood that has no tongue to reach with.
volleys are a tiny scale now, cell to cell, ciphers siphon
writing on the forest face is: pax, root in place
xylem has no interest in conflict conflab, harps, violins and violence
zithers wither, a waste of thrumming living wood that is and is.