QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 11 UNIVOCALISM

Ouliposter-Badge-Plum-300x300A univocalic text is one written with a single vowel. It is consequently a lipogram in all the other vowels. If he had been univocally minded, Hamlet might have exclaimed, “Be? Never be? Perplexed quest: seek the secret!” All words used must be sourced from your newspaper.

 

 

For the univocalism exercise I chose two articles, and two vowels, O and E, selecting all words in both pieces that contained either vowel.

Here are the words I have to work with:

O

on, of, cool, from, or, to, to, CO2, how, to, cool, cool, CO2, from, or, to, con, would, fool, to, from, so, slowly, on, from, both, should, of, tool, to, to, on, for, of, CO2, from, on, should, also, could, from, or, orb, to, short, of, pro, con, to, of, doubts, of, of, oxford, worth, to, to, of, among, of, to, of, of, on, now, work, on, for, to, on, to, to, worry, would, world’s, from, to, low, to, hold, not, work, of, how, to, pro, CO2, from, to, to, of, don’t, or, no, knows, to, or, to, to, cool, from, known, or, on, or, to, grow, crops, CO2, from, pow, to, CO2, CO2, from, only, opt, drop, long, cord, to, on, alcohol, ago, alcohol, for, down, from, of, to, port, drop, to, drop, con, long, of, to, drop, to, of, sold, also, to, of, sold, to, to, from, son, of, of, stood, from, on, of, alcohol, from, opt, from, of, from, for, to, down from, son, son.

E

sheets, germ, sheets, keep, the, melt, the, reflect, the, net, net, reflect, expert, press, week, whether, be, the, keep, check, the, week, the, the, the, every, reflect, seen, even, express, present, there, level, these, Steve, he, get, better, sense, whether, there’s, these, they, be, they, new, set, be, references, they be, energy, energy, seems, ever, rent, be, levels, the tech, yet, whether, they, tech, be, tech, effect, tech, them, effect, the, the, tested, energy, the, then, them, the, then, deep, net, effect, beer, term, trend, less, beer, spent, the, per cent, beer, the, the, ended, per cent, beer, fell, per cent, beer, per cent, the, term, trend, beer, the, per, per, beer, fell, grew, per cent, beer, fell, per cent, beer, per cent, were, per cent, the, per cent, the per cent, per, per, per, per, the, beer, per cent, the, term, per cent, per cent the, netted, the, end.

Here are my draft Univocalism poems, INCLUDING the titles, although I stretched a bit using numbers for the first one:

 

Alcohol Sold 2013 = $21B

ball-and-stick model of CO2: carbon dioxide

ball-and-stick model of CO2: carbon dioxide (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Crops grow for alcohol
world ports drop—
sold from son to son.

How to cool?
CO2, would work
to cool.

Sons worry,
doubt worth,
opt for alcohol
drop down
from cool to fool—
POW!

 

BEER ENERGY EFFECT

A Kranz (wreath) of Kölsch beer.

A Kranz (wreath) of Kölsch beer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Keep the sheets.
Check the germ level.

The net effect every week
seems better whether beer per cent fell.

The term trend references less energy spent,
the deep expert levels set.

The beer tech, tested,
netted end present germ energy effect.

– CAS April 11, 2014

 

Sources:

(Unfortunately I am unable to show the text I used to select my words, as neither chosen articles appear in the digital edition, only in print. CAS)

 Canadian Press, The Canadians are buying more wine, less beer, Ottawa Citizen print edition, April 11, 2014 F1

 Ritter, Karl The Associated Press, A cool idea or mad science? Ottawa Citizen, print edition, April 11, 2014 C5

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QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 8 BEAU PRESENT

Ouliposter-Badge-Plum-300x300

This constraint is also known as Beautiful Inlaw.

Select a name from one of your newspaper articles, famous or not. Compose a poem using only words that can be made from the letters in that person’s name. For example, if you selected “John Travolta,” you may only use words that can be made from the letters A, J, H, L, N, O, R, T and V.

The use of web-based tools is highly encouraged to help uncover different words that can be made from your letters of choice. One tool you might consider is the Scrabble Word Finder.

Having struggled earlier on with trying to lipogram words into a poem without using any vowel but U, my eye was caught immediately by a name of the sports page, Craig Anderson, who plays goal for the Ottawa Senators. However, two articles later I still ended up with a very short poem.  So many nice words that wanted a “T”  or a “G”. I wasn’t left with very many “meaty” words, due  to the constraint of selecting from the newspaper, of course.  Few of the wonderful words Scrabble Word Finder provided were included. I used Doug Luman’s lipogram generator, as I have had problems with the various tools including his beau present, but the lipogram provided me with a usable base, all I had to do was eliminate the straggler words that didn’t fit my selected letters.

English: Spartacat, official mascot of the Ott...

English: Spartacat, official mascot of the Ottawa Senators. Note that the picture has been cropped from original. Français : Spartacat, macotte officielle des Sénateurs d’Ottawa. L’image a été recadrée à partir de l’originale (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here is the list of words I was able to use:

Craig car Canadian came ion can can can Consider can rear road round Red Red received received remain rain right rear road round Red Red received received rain a and and and and and an a and a and a a and a and a and and a and As a and a a and and are a a a a and a and and a and and and and and an a and a and a a and a and a and and a and As a and a a and and are a a a a and a and and and in in In in in is is in I is I I I is I ice in in in a and and and and and an a and a and a a and a and a need no no need no do do do one one end rear road Red Red received received rear road round Red Red received received season see season so so season second season said season said season said season s ions said ion season says s season season said on order on on need no need no no

second article: is son, a in an in in and and son, red and
s is a as in 1,000 in a 27 in residence
’s is and noses as and 35 cries. One . dance, a 21-

 

The resulting poem:

Second Season Canadian Can-Can

Consider Canadian second season rain
round craigs, on rear roads.

Ice can remain in residence
on 1000 red noses,

in 35 cries,
and as one dance.

Carol A. Stephen
April 8, 2014

 

Ice Storm, Carleton PlaceSOURCES:

  • Warren, Ken, Anderson tries to look ahead, not back at the lost season Ottawa Citizen, April 8, 2014, (B1)
  • Rayner, Gordon, Prince George begins his royal duty in New Zealand, Ottawa Citizen April 8 print edition (A6 from UK Telegraph story)

 

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QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 6, BLANK VERSE AMIDST THE PROSE

Ouliposter-Badge-Plum-300x300For Day 6, the task is to compose a poem using unintentional lines of iambic pentameter found in the newspaper.

For this one, I again opted for the Arts section of the newspaper, and a bit of poetic licence as far as the meter is concerned.

My first attempt started out okay but there wasn’t quite enough material for me to maintain both meter and poem.

1.

From giant puppet dinosaurs a fest
of tiny sweating puppet people,
a plethora of puppet stuff.

Attempt 2 feels a bit closer to what we were to do, although it still doesn’t quite get there, so I am not happy with this one either:

2.

In thrall of Thrones lies Castle Black an hour
along the northern peak outside Belfast
in shades of moral greys and déjà vu
a good and epic sprawl of drunken louts.

 

Attempt #3 began when I hauled out my books on form and prosody, but it wasn’t till Hollander’s Rhyme and Reason that I found the best one, not far off another Ouliposter’s da DUM suggestion:  a line that repeats the word about 5 times, or the phrase a boat, as the simplest way to hear this in my head.  Of course, the two articles I chose were fairly short, so not much wiggle room but I essentially abandoned the first article at

3.

From giant puppet dinosaurs fest
to tiny puppet people

For one thing, it is about two feet short on the second line, and even line one is stretching it.

So I moved on to the next one and revised to this:

4.

In thrall of Thrones lies Castle Black an hour
along the northern peak in shades of greys
and déjà vu, and gangs of drunken louts

It isn’t perfect, and frankly, I think for me iambic pentameter isn’t my favourite.  I’d like it better rhyming if only to better understand the accents. I have to accept that I won’t “get” all of the constraints as we move through the month.

***

 

 

Sources:

  • Robb, Peter , Hanging in there, BABY Ottawa Citizen Arts Section Apr 5, 2014 (F1)
    Dekel, Jonathan In thrall of Thrones, Ottawa Citizen Arts Section Apr. 5, 2014 (F3)

 

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QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 5 TAUTOGRAM

Perec-300x300Today’s prompt is a short one, although not without its own measure of complexity!

 TAUTOGRAM:

Compose a poem whose words — or at least the principal ones — all begin with the same letter. The words must be sourced from your newspaper.

I again decided to split my poem, using 5 letters, one per stanza, to create a poem built of 5 tautograms.  The title?  Black Sabbath will appear in Ottawa on April 13, 2014, which just happens to be my birthday.

 

BLACK SABBATH BIRTHDAY BASH

1.

Birmingham band, British born Breed:
Butler, Brad, Bill. Broke boys,
bruises, bumps beers.
Black beyond big
built on British Beatles blues
and beyond.

2.

One original, Ozzy Osbourne.
Often out,
only one of Original,
often out.

3.

Surprising success.
Singer stuff started:
stage show, something simpler
strings, soul, slang.
Stones style.
Strangled, smashed stage so surprising.

4.

Police, pubs, parties,
pot, paranoid,
Play, playing, played.

5.

Rare rockers reunited,
rhythm, rock revived,
realize respect.

 

Black Sabbath on stage at Schleyerhalle in Stu...

Black Sabbath on stage at Schleyerhalle in Stuttgart, Germany. “Reunion Tour”. From left to right: Geezer Butler, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Source:

  • Robb, Peter Black Sabbath keeps it simple, Ottawa Citizen print edition Apr. 5, 2014 (F1, F4)

And much thanks to the Oulipost Project and Found Poetry Review’s #Doug Luman, for his text tools which help so much to make these efforts possible .

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