QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 14 COLUMN INCHES

Posted on April 14, 2014 by quillfyre

Refer to the advertising section or the classifieds in your source newspaper. Create a poem by replacing all of the nouns in your chosen ad segment or classified listing with nouns from one article in the same newspaper. You may use multiple ads/classifieds, presented in the order of your choosing.

First, I chose the articles I’d use for the ads, based on headlines with interesting words. I chose three, but since the instructions said to use ONE article, that’s what I did for all the small ads. But I also found a larger, half page ad that I wanted to play with. I haven’t used the product brand name, as I don’t want to suggest any questions of trademark infringement! I decided to use a different article for that, and to choose only selected portions of the ad for my “poem”.

Here are the eight small classified section poems, with varying success and silliness:

Not a Live-In Prison

Condo Inferno. keeping
common tragedy clean.
Normal building blaze,
daily winds, Fire safety hilltop
ensuring city is in fire.
Inmates 35K a fire.
This is not a live-in prison.

High End

Join us.
High end people require
homes and senior streets
year round electricity.
Email flames.

Seeking a Sky

Group seeking a sky
to work in the Ottawa hilltops.
Must have service horizons.
Must be winds,
all relevant history
up to death.

SKY (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Golden Firefighters

purebred people,
vaccinated, dewormed.
Inhalation available.
Reserve now.

Louis, at 1

vaccinated, neutered, microchipped
damage catastrophe,
playful, active, enjoys being
with fire trucks.

Selection of KLM Delft Blue Houses (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Delft Blue

Private hospitals.
beautiful family staircase
of Dutch Delft blue
porcelain hills & wall remains.
Also black lacquer beautiful
hand-painted Chinese governor.
36 x 14 & 2 neighbourhoods.

Variable Pricing

Planes. 2 Bed spots for sale.
Sleigh zone dark wood
asking 1000
Girls Double access points.
Asking 1100, $1000

Trendiest Air

Q-West Legislature Westboro.
Rare catastrophe.
Last 2 BR corner zone avail.
overlooking history
& Heritage Stone People.
Amazing lifestyle access points,
trendiest air.
Selling due to supplies, purchase at street.
Fire reserved 2 flames ago
to ensure best ashes.
$459,900

stone faces (Photo credit: Miquel99)

And this is the piece based on the half-page ad:

Masking the Toothbrush Lumber

Save time, get predictions
for your back trash.
This tsunami only:
clinically proven back
decompression oceans 50% off.

Debris affects 80% of beachcombers,
can rob you of your remnants,
where getting out of waves becomes
a painful season of your bad months.

While bottles provide temporary earthquake,
the damage can reoccur, cigarette lighters mask
the toothbrush lumber. Other shoes
cost thousands of plastic rings,
have substantial health panic…

Decompression Back Fear expands
to stretch tight back torrents
to help relieve flotsam on pinched bottom
caused by herniated twine,
degenerated trash-mass,
dream, scream and poor sewage.
By relieving the high seas,
you can help relieve the indifference …

30 Day Trash Back Waste!
There’s no smorgasbord.
Try it to finally get rid
of your back bellies

CAS April 14, 2014

Flotsam and Jetsam (Photo credit: krossbow)

Sources:

Ibanez, Graciela and Jarroud, Marianela Chile inferno a tremendous ‘tragedy’, Ottawa Citizen print edition, April 14, 2014 (A7)

Moneo, Shannon, Oceans of garbage threaten our planet, Ottawa Citizen, print edition, April 14, 2014 (A9

Classified Ad Section (B6)

Partial ad, Page (A4)

QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 13 EPITHALAMIUM

Posted on April 13, 2014 by quillfyre

Today’s Oulipost prompt: An Oulipian epithalamium, or marriage song, is one composed exclusively with the letters of the names of bride and groom (bride and bride, groom and groom, etc). Visit the engagement or wedding announcements section of your newspaper and select a couple. Write a poem using only words that can be made with the letters in their name. You may choose to use first names only if you prefer anonymity or full names if you’re desperate for more letters.

Sounded simple enough. I’ve written one before. Well, almost. I wrote a reverse epithalamium, a non-epithalamium about a wedding that did not take place. The first difficulty was that there is no longer a section for these announcements in the paper. Going to the link showed me announcements for weddings that happened in 2004-2005!

So, I stole a trick out of a fellow Ouliposter’s bag, thanks Amanda Earl! I used my own name and the name of my second husband. That gave me a good selection of letters, all but D, F, M, Q, U, V, X, Y, Z. Amazing though the number of good solid words that ruled out, with no D, no F and no M. Even a Y would have come in handy at one point.

The second difficulty was that even though I had a fair number of words to choose from, there was a high count for repetitions. The first article gave me 378 words according to Word but SortMyLIst said there was 47. (Didn’t check the second article.)

I won’t bore you with the lists themselves, but here is my epithalamium, the bride’s words to the groom. The names I used? Carol Anne Swaebe Stephen and John Attila Galko. It was sad to write as John died 10 years ago, but good memories even so.

As We Begin Again

Bridal bouquet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the best thing, where
two can be one, the past
opening to the heart,
to tears,
to new secrets,
to start in one last season.
To know when to
take this step.

We were.
We are.
We will be
two as one,
the heart wearing no holes,
It is all the breath
that knows no longer night.
–CAS April 13, 2014

QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 12 SONNET

Posted on April 12, 2014 by quillfyre

Today’s Oulipost challenge: Write a sonnet sourced from lines found in newspaper articles. You may choose your own sonnet type. ( Examples here) and should feel free to be creative with the rules. One known Oulipo variation is “sonnets of variable length,” in which one must compose a sonnet in which the lines are either as short as possible or as long as possible.

I thought at first about doing a word sonnet, but once I had chosen the article I planned to use, that didn’t seem like it would work quite the way I wanted. I read briefly about Berrigan’s sonnets and decided to go with a very loose variation. I also went with 3 quatrains and a closing couplet.

To Learn More About Swooping
—Variation on a Berrigan Sonnet

English: A young White-backed Vulture in Mikumi National Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One more drop into the sky,
that first dive from the heavens:
a cobalt breeze, a soft blue sky.
Free fall emotion in love again.

Practising three hours a day
at too steep an angle, he let go
to learn more about swooping, fast
and low, too close to the ground.

A chain two feet too long
can change a man’s character
in a cloud of dust
two storeys into the air.

To mourn the world,
he’s learning to drive.

CAS April 12, 2014

Source: Skydiver makes peace with the heavens, By Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen PRINT EDITION April 12, 2014 (E1)

English: Shakespeare’s sonnet 1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 11 UNIVOCALISM

Posted on April 11, 2014 by quillfyre

A 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:

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.

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 (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. (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

Quillfyre

Aspiring to poet

Tag Archives: Found Poetry Review

QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 14 COLUMN INCHES

QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 13 EPITHALAMIUM

QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 12 SONNET

QUILLFYRE’S #OULIPOST 11 UNIVOCALISM

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