Inspiration for this piece: Over at dVerse Poets Pub, they are exploring the intersection (or Marriage) of math and poetry. While the introduced form (which I must admit intrigues me) is not one I have ever come across, I have explored other convergences of math and poetry: Fibs, which are based off of the Fibonacci sequence; Palindromes, of the word by word variety (I've seen the letter by letter variety and those people who wrote them...wow); and then technically there is any of the syllabic numerical pattern such as Etherees and Nonets. The challenge was to employ the N+7, the most well known OULIPO (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle) though the Palindrome falls under this group as well. Or, for those left-side brained crazy people (crazy is my word), to create an form where math and poetry overlap. If I haven't mentioned this lately, my left brain has been vying for some attention as of late...seems my right has been running the show. And so, please forgive me the math you are about to encounter.
A bit of math: I was too lazy to write my own explanation of the Stem-and-Leaf plot, so I grabbed this from the Usborne Illustrated Dictionary of Math.
A bit of figurative language: I'm certain most poets are well familiar with alliteration. "The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words." (google search dictionary definition) There definitely are some fun tongue twister examples of this..."Peter Piper picked a pack of picked peppers"..."Sally sold sea shells by the sea shore"...
The trick of bringing them together: First...often with alliteration, there are additional words (such as of, the, by, etc.) that sit in the midst of the adjacent "same" letters. In creating this mergence, these extras must go and not take away from the piece. Second...in the case of the stem, this comes from the beginning consonants that are repeating. (Yes, I am avoiding words that begin with vowels in this creation...I'm sure I could come up with a way to use vowels, but my brain is not ready for such thought.) Finally, the leaf comes from the rest of the word, with spaces (as seen above) used between the word endings. So, what does it look like and how do you read it? Glad you asked....
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| cr | azy |
hmmm....maybe I shouldn't tell you how it reads...it would probably be more fun if you have to figure it out...
An aside: As for the N+7...give me and my pocket dictionary a few minutes or so...
8 comments:
What a cool form you chose! I imagine the possibilities are endless. Thanks for sharing this one!
What a fascinating and original pattern. I like your creativity!
Crispy words, like the form. Thanks for stopping by :)
I figured it out, this was fun to read & connecting the letters together ~ Thanks for sharing your thought process ~
Really liked this and your slippery, slimy creatures...got it in one and want to write one all on my own. Tres cool, thank you!
love the hissing sound reminding of the crawling creatures...a f/antastic ascinating write up...
ok, i am obviously the only little boy left...because i laughed out loud at green ass....smiles....cool and fresh way of playing....
I love anything with alliterations.. this variant is excellent play.. I liked the result of slippery imy and green ass.. :-)
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