Christian Bok, in his book of poetry, Eunoia, dedicates a section of his long poem to each vowel. In each segment, Bok uses only that vowel, as in the example below. For today's writing exercise, write a poem in which you use only one vowel.
Oulipo: A Story of Three Peas
Your irony doesn’t please me a bit, replied the other,
and you’ll not learn a thing.
Check out Raymond Queneau’s tale about three alert peas. Yes, peas. “A Story as You Like It” meets hypertext here.
Read/create/enjoy.
oPen 10
Here’s an exercise in Oulipo. I got it from the book Oulipo Compendium by Harry Matthews. Your mission: Write a left-handed lipogram. This is a poem in which you may use only the keys on the left-side of your computer keyboard.
100,000,000,000,000 Poems by Raymond Queneau
Rereading the Oulipo Compendium tonight. Here are some lines that caught my eye. They’re from Queneau’s 100,000,000,000,000 Poems. The poems of this sequence are sonnets–of a sort. The lines of these sonnets are interchangeable. In other words, line 11 of any sonnet could be exchanged with line 11 of any of the other sonnets in the sequence. Queneau used mathematics to create his own brand of formalism, resulting in some cool and surreal experiments.
It’s no good rich men crying Heaven Bless
Or grinning like a pale-faced golliwog
Poor Yorick comes to bury not address
We’ll suffocate before the epilogue
Poor reader smile before your lips go numb
The best of all things to an end must come
