Here are some of my examples of constrained writing. What is that? Well, it is better to just read it... The first example is a "poem" I wrote about William Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing. The more you know about this great play, the more you will understand the poem. But it may take some time for you to guess why it is so bizzare. The answer is below.
Hark! Hear lovely, bonny Beatrice: "Claudio nastily o'erturned fair nuptials! Now men avoid sea, prefer shore, change, avoid kingdoms, celebrate sea! Twice vice-versa! Commend men for constancy? Never!""Claudio's zeal goes glancing awry," says Benedick, knowing rightly, spurning youthful, zestful nonny-nonny. "Marriage? T'will ruin rascals Pedro and Claudio!"
I sigh so! (This isn't xenophobia, Claudio) Blithe ladies, come, pursue newly predestinate scratched-faces. Ever gentlemen torment, deceive Hero, ever torment young Leonato's Hero.
"Too wise" replies our illustrious poet, "are hotheads to pursue betrothal peacefully."
And remember, fair reader, a tale periodic under non-ryhming planets, as conceived: Benedick can even find marriage now likable!
My Poem on Zarathustra'a Midnight Song, (the "Drunken Song") by Nietzsche:
"Man, I warn!" A voice announced. "In dreamy sleep, I've awoke. Midnight, awakening, notices suffering, not as day realized.
Deep, deeper as today's view. But joy outlasts yet an eternal suffering. Leave heartaches by. Eternity! Eternity! Deep! A suffering demands: O, begone! Eternally, joy endeavors eternally."
Well, any ideas on the constraints of these two works? In the first case, I wanted to write someting about Much Ado About Nothing, but under the constraint that the first letter in each word had to stand for an element in the periodic table (in the correct order, of course). So, our poem begins with words corresponding to Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, etc... I find this very exciting and satisfying. Don't you?
In the second case, I have tried to rewrite Nietzsche's wonderful "Midnight Song," with the constraint that each word had to have a length dictated by succesive digits in pi. So, the word length must go: 3,1,4,1,5, etc... This is really my first try at a pi poem. If you want too see a really good pi poem, check out: Poe E., Near a Raven.
Speaking of pi. We can think of pi itself as a poem with a limitless number of "words." We can group these words, which are of course the digits themselves, in different ways to achieve different aesthetic results. Everyone who knows pi has their favorite way of remembering the digits. Here is how I like group the first 110:
3.1415926535 8979 3238 46264 3383 279 502 884 1971 69 399 375 105 820 974 944 59 2307 816 406 286 20 8998 628 034 825 342 117 067 982 14808 651
These are palindromes I have written: In the first case, I wanted a palindrome which expressed, correctly, some rule of mathematics without being trivial. The rule here, of course, is that tan(x)= sin(x)/cos(x). In the second case, I wanted a rhyming palindrome.
Han: "So, canon is: tan(n) is sin(n) at sin on a cos(n)! Ah!"
Llama? No, Dev (ill at every rev.) et. al., lived on a mall.
