Poem 20 - More Fun with Oulipo Constraints

Photo: Sally Douglas

This Day's Constraint

Today is a death to sleep.

This set of hours is rest’s oblivion.

Day and dark want that fall’s fall,

ticking tiredly away –

Wednesday, respite’s murderer.

Tomorrow is the birth of wakening.

Today is a day to sleep.

I sit within indigo hills, in wing-singing wind,

below a slope of blade south-east.

On the ground beneath the sounds,

I am low in a sky of calling flight

all arching, flying, hymning over.

Oh, low moon-bowl of owl solos

below a sky of birdsong.

This poem is a result of a bit more playing with OULIPO constraints. The Oulipo Compendium (ed Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie, Atlas Press, 2005), describes a way of submitting a line or a stanza of poetry to a series of variations, thereby creating a new piece of work. It sounds both straightforward, and weird. It is weird, but it's surprisingly difficult to do, and the constraints force a creativity with language which can have very satisfying and surprising results. The poem above took some lines from yesterday's poem (actually I combined some shorter lines to make longer ones for this purpose), and submitted them to the following constraints:

First Stanza

1. First line in N+7
2. First line as a lipogram in a
3. First line as a univocalism in a
4. First line with nouns eliminated
5. First line with verbs eliminated
6. First line treated antonymically
7. First line in its original form

Second Stanza

1. Second line as a univocalism in i
2. Second line in N+7
3. Second line with verbs eliminated
4. Second line as a lipogram in e
5. Second line with nouns eliminated
6. Second line as a univocalism in o (Actually this should use the first line, but I made a mistake!)
7. Second line in its original form

It's fun to do, and really stretches the brain! I can't claim that it produced a fabulous poem, but I think it's a brilliant exercise to get the language muscles flexing without having to face the terror of the blank page.  

And I hope I haven't made any glaring errors when applying the constraints.

Or possibly, I hostage I haven't made any glaring europeans when applying the containers...