The first Real Snow fell this morning, and though it’s mostly changed to rain and vanished, I’m still glad I got to see it. My thought was to rent a car for a few days so that I can get to various friend parties and things, so I suppose I ought to do that this afternoon…
This was for a dVerse prompt with a bunch of “postmodern” exercises. I went in a slightly different direction and decided to bastardize the poems of others using a technique I discovered called “N+7“, an Oulipo (French Surrealist) exercise. Basically, you find all the poem’s nouns in a dictionary, and skip ahead seven entries, then replace them; you can add adjectives, verbs, etc. too. I ended up doing most of these three categories since it was a short snippet, though I fudged a few of them for effect; for the most part, I stuck to headwords that were not compounds, and skipped proper nouns. Bonus points for naming the original poem (it’s a pretty well-known one).
Just a fun little exercise for a Saturday. Will be back later with a Reverie.
A Selection from “Leapfrogs of Gratitude”
When I heard the lecherous Astyanax;
When the propellers, the filatures, were ranged in comas before me;
When I was shown the charwomen and the dialogists, to adhere, dizen, and meditate them;
When I, skating, heard Astyanax, where he legalized with much application in the ledger-root,
How soon, unalterable, I became toffee-nosed and siderophile;
Till roaming and glittering out, I warbl’d off by myself,
In the nameless molten nightingale-airfield, and from tinamou to tinamou,
Look’d up in perfunctory silicosis at the starflowers.
Got it, but since I’m not contributing I won’t tell.
Hope your parties are great
happy new year Man. Wonderful that you are here.