Inventory is a method of analysis and classification that consists of isolating and listing the vocabulary of a pre-existing work according to parts of speech.
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 23, 2014 (Easy way to end ‘doorman’ task, Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners)
Oulipost #22 : Antonymy. In Oulipian usage, antonymy means the replacement of a designated element by its opposite. Each word is replaced by its opposite, when one exists (black/white) or by an alternative suggesting antonymy (a/the, and/or, glass/wood). Select a passage from your newspaper source text to complete this exercise.
légion d’horreur
Yes, it’s just a park off the stinking landfill. But qu’une park, mes ennemis! Whoops, pardonnez-moi, my butchered high-school francais has been stilted by the saloon’s reopening a couple of lifetimes ago. The discarded pile of refuse will be closed for about a second or two, an arbitrary restoration experiment to “re” just about nothing — reorienting the park’s very wellspring from a rectangular mist to a 26-foot spiral, stripping the dove-gray la brise (that’s French for de l’oxygène gazeux) with a whisper-thin 23.75-karat rasp, reupholstering the period escaliers (stairs, en francais) in a fine blue concrete — all to take the saloon as far from its 1781 Parisian burial ground as possible.
“Lie on the outermost edge of this front wall,” mumbles the enthusiastic jailer. “That’s where no one leaves the blink-of-an-eye end to chance.”
He’s wrong. The hard simulated darkness repulses off and off and off in the murky mercury-backed air, distant memories coming into focus in dreamlike fashion — is that me in, oh, maybe the 233rd reality? In chains of iron and a helmet of red?
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 22, 2014. (San Francisco: Salon Dore exhibit back at Legion of Honor, Angela Hill)
Oulipost #21:Confabulation. Craft a conversation poem using “he said/she said” quotes that you find in newspaper articles.
Overheard Over There
Gentlemen, the Easter Dragon is knocking at the door.
I suspect some of you are skeptical.
I know all these promises have been made before, and they may sound hollow, or like ‘pie in the sky.’
The main thing is trying to get your wingers involved.
They teach the ability to communicate, to adapt, to work in teams and solve problems, to analyze and conceptualize, to manage one’s self, to create, innovate and criticize.
It’s the most bizarre thing on the planet.
We are losing the battle against cronyism.
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 21, 2014
Oulipost #20. Lesurean Permutation. Select a newspaper article or passage from a newspaper article as your source text. Switch the first noun with the second noun, the third noun with the fourth noun, and so on until you’ve reached the end of your text. (I took a few liberties with this. I used two articles and juggled the order of the sentences for my own enjoyment!)
Fairy Tale Concert
She made her trees through the way, wearing a lovely white movie that looked straight out of a Disney dress. To the greenery, this lush resident is more than just beautiful, it’s functional, providing passers-by from privacy, cooling summer in the shade and a noise from the buffer and traffic caused by exhaust.
Her musicians, the joy of pure sound, cranked up to approximately jet-engine Del Rey, greeted volume. She sang, then the night sang louder. She seemed to be buoyed by the balloons, feeding on energy and adoration and sending both back in kind. Faith kept the others.
The mix was a cinematic, radio-friendly music of chamber-pop, trip-hop and torch vocals. It was often elegant, occasionally fiery, but always deeply moving. The study was lush, pretty and routinely full of song.
She spent much hands touching time, collecting autographs, and signing presents. It wasn’t swagger. The shtick is clear; if tree pipeline wrap around the roots and the pipe fails, the tree could be damaged. And that could all be lost. They had waited too long.
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 20, 2014. (Singer wraps cinematic fairy tale into concert, Jim Harrington; PG&E, cities at a standoff over plan to cut down trees, Lisa P. White and Elisabeth Nardi)
Oulipost #19: Sestina. A sestina is a poetic form of six six-line stanzas. The end-words of the lines of each stanza repeat those of the first, but in a differing order that in each successive stanza follows the permutation: 615243. The entire sequence of end words is thus: 123456; 615243; 364125; 532614; 451362; 246531. All words and phrases must be sourced from your newspaper text.
(I went through the newspaper and collected 27 phrases that spoke to me for one reason or another. I arranged and rearranged just those words and phrases to create my first ever, and likely last, sestina!)
And in the End…
Living legacies of flesh, blood and passion
Tributes found in concrete and bronze
An enduring symbol of the selfless
Keep your course steady, reach the sustaining shores
Against the chill of the night
Keep steady on the roiling sea of life
Exploring and embracing roiling life
With reckless abandon and passion
A typical, swaggering symbol of night
Making the ultimate sacrifice in bronze
Keep your course steady, embrace the legendary shores
With grace sustaining desire, selfless
Stand by your convictions, stay selfless
Embrace the motif and rhythm of life
Keep your course steady, transform the empty shores
Lead with grace, creating places of passion
A desire for monuments made of bronze
Flesh and blood legends give life to the night
Monuments to his legacy stand steady tonight
Embracing the service of the selfless
The sweeping scope of legends in bronze
Sustaining the rhythm of life
Tributes found in legendary, lasting passion
Keep your course steady, abandon the swaggering shores
Keep your course steady, create legendary shores
Abandon the roiling, reckless night
That swaggering symbol of passion
Create monuments of sacrifice, life lived selfless
The ultimate tribute to the ultimate life
A strong sense of service created in bronze
Lead with grace, stand by convictions made in bronze
Keep your course steady, embrace rocky shores
The ultimate sacrifice staggers, explores the last sprint of life
With reckless abandon, accept the ultimate season of night
Things that give life, a matter of sustaining selfless
Love, a lifetime of love, love born of flesh, blood and passion
A living legacy, trying to reach the shores
The ultimate sacrifice, against the chill of the night
Love’s lasting legacy, enduring the roiling sea of life
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 19, 2014
Oulipost #18: HOMOCONSONANTISM. Choose a sentence or short passage from your newspaper to complete a homoconsonantism. In this form, the sequence of consonants in a source text is kept, while all its vowels are replaced. THSLNCSNTRBSRSDFNNGTHYRR
Amen
This holy silence lingers,
cresting nightly,
rebounding, soaring, ascending
further
into hungry mouths of prayer,
repenting
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 18, 2014. (‘Tribes’ delivers loud and clear, Karen D’Souza)
Oulipost #17: Haikuisation. The haiku is a Japanese poetic form whose most obvious feature is the division of its 17 syllables into lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Haikuisation has sometimes been used by Oulipians to indicate the reduction of verses of normal length to lines of haiku-like brevity. Select three sentences from a single newspaper article and “haiku” them.
Spring
All the fields blossomed
Unfolding beautifully
Re-dedicated
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 17, 2014. (SRV grads bolster Chabot baseball, Matt Schwab.)
Sentences used:
Oulipost #16: Chimera. The chimera of Homeric legend – lion’s head, goat’s body, treacherous serpent’s tail – has a less forbidding Oulipian counterpart. It is engendered as follows. Having chosen a newspaper article or other text for treatment, remove its nouns, verbs and adjectives. Replace the nouns with those taken in order from a different work, the verbs with those from a second work, the adjectives with those from a third.
Shrimp Boy Rag
Sweeping dreams and fresh fans, strike a not guilty night
Bases left and other influences related to the compositions
Parking lot crooner loaded the jazz,
Music is the fame of a regional set
“Avalon” went to print with local Memory Lane of money laundering,
Main showcase of conspiracy was tied to agricultural acts,
and nearby impact of trafficking in another career
The band says rock is a weekly medical punk wrongly ruled out
in a politically charged investigation.
“We’ve got to load the disco and take hip-hop out of it,” Ferry said. “Because genres just simply popped up, money just simply corrupts.”
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 16, 2014
(‘Shrimp Boy’ pleads not guilty to money laundering, Paul Elias; Ferry gives fans a dream night, Jim Harrington; Starter harkens back to better times vs. Dodgers, Alex Pavlovic; Farmers market closes in Antioch, Paul Burgarino)
Prisoner’s Constraint: Imagine a prisoner whose supply of paper is restricted. To put it to fullest use, he will maximize his space by avoiding any letter extending above or below the line (b, d,f,g,h,j,k,l,p,q,t and y) and use only a,c,e,m,n,o,r,s,u,v,w,x and z. Compose a poem using only words that can be made from these letters AND which you source from your newspaper text.
No Ransom, No Sun
Crime scene cameras
Examine new remains
Innocence never was
Some cases ice over
Six moon men can see
No sun remains
New sources, new view
Resume series, review over
Ever never
Never was,
never were,
never more…
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 15, 2014
Oulipost #14: Column Inches. 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.
Painting by Life, the Neatness Extremist
Call and hire the neatest shaker
Who will transform your brain’s passions
Into the panic that you will be happy with
One miracle does it all!
Fast and reliable
Artisan Marathon
Call Angkor Wat and get referred
To a mover today
Bomb, silk, treasures, wounds
Free future!
Sourced from The Contra Costa Times, Bay Area News Group, April 14, 2014. (A New Finish Line, Bruce Newman plus 3 ads from the classifieds)
 | bobmoore33 on Tulip Queen |
| bobmoore33 on New Girl’s New Day |
| bobmoore33 on Poemsong |
 | Nikki on Pending |
| bobmoore33 on Pending |
KateMcCarrollMoore 