interpersonal restrictions

comfortable separation

launching messages outside

guilty space

cuts

you

or

I.

Sources:
Kim, Eun Kyung. “Seeing clearly: Discovering I had a cataract at 42 was an eye-opening experience.” Chicago Tribune digitalPLUS magazine. 28 April 2014: 9.

Manchir, Michelle. “Payout at ISU spurs protests: Students, staff seek details in president’s $480,000 exit deal.” Chicago Tribune. 28 April 2014:1.

The prompt:
A text in which each word has one letter less than the preceding one, and the last word only one letter. From your newspaper, select a starting word, and then continue adding words of decreasing length from the same source article or passage. Challenge yourself further by only using words in order as you encounter them in the text.

http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-28-melting-snowball/

A small packet

The forest blurred and his mind went quiet
in the sharp sun of an April afternoon,
lifeless in front of the television.

A straight line between one place and the next.

For company the hum of the interstate.
He waves or nods or smiles from time to time
reminding himself not to roll his eyes
his transition a permanent state.

People on their way from one place to the next.

He photographed the rubble and the ghosts
Across 3 miles of barren landscape
that separated him from town.
Sunrise on the porch of his trailer.
Knocks at a door, waving tree branches.

Sources:
Saslow, Eli. “A veteran’s isolation: One man’s rough transition from war zone camaraderie to a civilian life full of solitude.” Chicago Tribune. 27 April 2014: 23.

Schmich, Mary. “‘Camera man’ finds beauty in Cabrini-Green.” Chicago Tribune. 27 April 2014: 3.

The prompt:
Create a 14-line sonnet sourced from lines from your newspaper that is divided according to the first five digits of the irrational number pi – that is, into stanzas of 3, 1, 4, 1 and 5 lines. As with the preceding sonnet assignment (see April 14) you may interpret “sonnet” as formally or as loosely as you wish.

http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-27-irrational-sonnet/

“There are no whales here to watch,” he said, scanning the empty sea.
Even though I had been around them, struck them and watched them die, now I was watching them ballet, caressing their young. (Imagine what your home would look like without any trees, shrubs, flowers or grass).
“Why did you take me on this terrible, terrible tour of my past?”
Better to linger over these locations for a moment or two as the guest continues a train of thought. Stop the celebrating, avoid the stragglers and return to the rebuilding already in progress. We no longer use pieces of mirror to signal where the whales were from hill to hill.
“Clearly, in the future, we’ll have to get a grip on this and carefully, carefully design the next phase,” he said.
For some patients it could be life-changing. But it won’t matter as much as what is already taking place. Memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. Someone to catch the glimpses of its beauty and lack thereof. In close-up. But stick two strangers in a car, and suddenly there’s an intimacy – sometimes comfortable, sometimes not – enforced within its glass-and-steel enclosure.
“Everybody likes the blame the storms, but there are storms every year. Watching them took my breath away. The rising water spilled into the basement of my small fieldstone office perched alongside the stream.”
It can do all that — as long as you believe such a fickle, abstract thing exists. The car never stops. Landmarks are pointed out, drive-by style. There are no question marks in my mind. Gardens that have been carefully tended for years are now at risk of being lost. And there are likely more on the way.
“You see any whales to watch?”

Sources:
Charles, Jacqueline. “Last of the whalters: St. Vincent is one of the few places in the world where whale harpooning is still allowed. Some cling to the contested tradition, but many would like to see it come to an end.” Chicago Tribune. 25 April 2014: 15.

Conway, Sean. “Planning helps solve garden water troubles”. Chicago Tribune. 25 April 2014: Chicago Homes, 5.

Greenstein, Teddy. “Yea or nay, union push spurs change for NCAA”. Chicago Tribune. 25 April 2014: Sports, 1.

Hine, Chris. “Heat of the momentum: Bickell’s big goal could have series rolling Hawks’ way”. Chicago Tribune. 25 April 2014: Sports, 7.

Karp, Gregory. “United’s earnings under the weather: Storms, Asia weakness cited for $609M 1st-quarter loss CEO calls ‘disappointing”. Chicago Tribune. 25 April 2014: Business, 1.

MacVean, Mary. “Early tests in on 2 drugs aimed at preventing migrains: 1st targeted agents must still undergo confirmatory trials”. Chicago Tribune. 25 April 2014: 12.

Metz, Nina. “‘My Chicago’ is a promising work in progress”. Chicago Tribune. 25 April 2014: Arts + Entertainment, 1.

Milbert, Neil. “Beating drum for his entries: Rivelli running pair in Land of Lincoln Stakes”. Chicago Tribune.25 April 2014: Sports, 9.

Sullivan, Paul. “Cubs can turn out lights, Wrigley’s party is over”. Chicago Tribune. 25 April 2014: Sports, 1.

The prompt:
Aka “line stretching.” From your newspaper text, pick two sentences. Add a new sentence between the first two; then two sentences in the new intervals that have become available; and continue to add sentences until the passage has attained the length desired. The supplementary sentences must either enrich the existing narrative or create a new narrative continuity.
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-25-larding/

The gun is to
dramatically
believe
the congregation of violence
that
strengthened people
intensified bars
pushed in members
hailed victory and
disappointed confiscation.

But it would
arm
a house of worship
in the
guns of restrictions
who have been
decried
to forbid
checkpoints
absolute
and relax
with rampages
full of
protection.

Sources:
Dardick, Hal. “Aldermen push value of a ban on plastic bags: Chicago plan would affect large chain stores first, exempt independent shops.” Chicago Tribune. 24 April 2014: 1.

Simon, Richard. “Ga. governor signs ‘guns-everywhere bill’ into law: Rights added to carry arms in airports, bars and churches, defend against attacks.” Chicago Tribune. 24 April 2014: 12.

The prompt:
mosyntaxism is a method of translation that preserves only the syntactic order of the original words. To give a rudimentary example, if N=noun, V=verb and A=adjective, the outline NVA could yield solutions such as “The day turned cold,” “Violets are blue,” “An Oulipian! Be wary!”)

Option 1: Choose a sentence from your newspaper source text and write as many homosyntaxisms as possible based on that same variation.

Option 2: Complete a homosyntaxism of an entire paragraph or article found in your text.
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-24-homosyntaxism/

(You can click on the image above to see it larger in a separate window, if you’d like)

Source:
Jessica Wohl. “McDonald’s not loving 1Q results: Sales, profit miss expectations; CEO says improvements are on front burner.” Chicago Tribune. 23 April 2014: Business, 3.

The prompt:
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. Choose a newspaper article or passage from a newspaper article and “inventory” the nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, articles, etc. Bonus points for creative presentation of your final lists.
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-23-inventory/

Author note:
I’m afraid that I did not understand or know what to do with this prompt at all.
So, I used Excel to create lists of the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in the article. Then I deleted all of the cells that had proper nouns in them, and sorted the noun column alphabetically. This spaced things out in an interesting way, which you can also see or download below. I copied all of the words into Wordle and played around with the various settings to create a word cloud that I think resembles a potato or perhaps a patty.

Download (PDF, 159KB)

Everyone’s Sober Aunt

She wasn’t the bad girl,
nor a frowny bad girl anomaly.
Her sensibly unimpressive
obscure defamations were not light,
her mask meek.

But woman, this speech!
A knot!
A foot stripper!
A somberly small wrist dim without leg dust!

She would suppress those ordinary whispers
but refuse a weakness for her “victims”
(this was not you).
She would mutter nothings unlike
“Strangers who you die despite
also exhale a soil
which tastes not of surrender!”
She always thought out
the defamation
which she did not
go there
out the platform to
near here.

“Remove our fingertips from your bones,
tickle out of your muscles,
dig up my feathers out of your skin,
yet a weakness
note of the victim
will never failllll!”
she mumbled after many accords.

Deadening anti-matter
from 90-day-young girls.

Source:
Ziezulewicz, Geoff. “Ultimate Warrior shook top rope, stirred up fans.” Chicago Tribune. 22 April 2014: 2.

The prompt:
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).

Original: To be or not to be, that is the question.
Antonymy: To not be and to be: this was an answer.

Select a passage from your newspaper source text to complete this exercise.
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-22-antonymy/

We can’t allow it to take away from our aggressiveness.
We have to be disciplined.
Our movement wasn’t as good as it normally is.
We have to make quick decisions. We have to go through them.
You could say fatigue. We got lackadaisical. And they capitalized on it.
We’ll be fine.
We can’t put our heads down.
I saw them talking to him.
It makes it a little more gutless. You don’t need to be going after him when he doesn’t even know where he really is.
I’m not happy about that.
We can’t use that as an excuse. But you could see he was tiring a little bit.
He was giving us what he had.
He has actually been doing a really nice job.
Everyone grieves differently.  Obviously, he’s going through a tough time.
I don’t want to talk about that.
Got to give credit where credit is due.
Now we’re in a similar situation.
It’s cliche but it’s what we need to do.
It gets my head spinning. It’s not anything I’m used to.
It’s never been touched.
It gives you a little fire when you see that happen right in front of you.
It is like watching some sort of magician work. 
Her process is so internal, and so finite and so flawless.
They said, ‘This is going to be insane.’
There’s no panic on their side, and there won’t be.
Now it’s public, and you have to sort of quiet up the noise.
It would be nice. It would be super nice. But I wouldn’t want to share the fun.
Just attack.

Sources:
Teddy Greenstein. “‘A tough time’ for Noah: Grieving loss of mentor, Bulls center struggles in dueling Wizards’ Nene.” Chicago Tribune. 21 April 2014: Sports, 5.

K.C. Johnson. “Stealing Home: Bulls give up the advantage by letting series opener slip away at United Center.” Chicago Tribune. 21 April 2014: Sports, 1.

Colleen Kane. “Stalled offense finds some life: Semien, Danks ignite attack as Sox end 4-game losing streak.” Chicago Tribune. 21 April 2014: Sports, 3.

Chris Kuc. “Getting dirty look: Seabrook draws 3-game suspension; taunting, Bickell hits also anger Blues.”  Chicago Tribune. 21 April 2014: Sports, 1.

Fred Mitchell. “Clutch bunch: Reds’ 2-out hitting something Cubs hope to emulate.” Chicago Tribune. 21 April 2014: Sports, 3.

Yvonne Villarreal . “‘Orphan Black’ star an expert multitasker.” Chicago Trbune. 21 April 2014: Arts + Entertainment, 3.

The prompt:
Craft a conversation poem using “he said/she said” quotes that you find in newspaper articles.
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-21-confabulation/

Through forest-clenched winters,
along roiling streets and
urban rivers
toward
whatever
dragons
understanding
crimes and
complicated clones
may help
reveal.

I imagined the
fine stags
tenderly strung
with
jewelry
shells and
tiny teeth
charming family
friends
and
loved years
12,000 ones
before
more modern pyramids
built
the great people
in Egypt.

Sources (in order of appearance):
McNamara, Mary. “TV relationships finally get more complex”. Chicago Tribune. 20 April 2014: Arts + Entertainment, 6.

Steves, Rick. “Europe’s art framed in the quiet moments”. Chicago Tribune. 20 April 2014: Travel, 2.

The prompt:
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.
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-20-lescurean-permutation-plain/

Scent sits clean on hymen

and detain the entry
offer it to clean  home
on amber eyes,
and the needs meant
(loathe a month)
anemia of scenic true bliss.
map
plan
mere algae around
sooth scant use.
tease in region,
and the theory.
(soft honey)
wrap aura
tuck anew
aloud
guide the teeth clean
so they —
carotid-clad —
dive
elope
untie
ebbs foamy planetoid
noise aurora
agate
we amoebas —
boatlike aethers —
enthuse atomic lily afield.
they heave aside
ripe
reductive
clean
eyeing wild beneath coil.
endure
arise upon us ably

Source:
Monte Morin.”Scientists clone human embryonic stem cells from 2 adults”. Chicago Tribune. 18 April 2014: 15.

The prompt:
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. For example:
ORIGINAL: To be or not to be: that is the question.
CONSONANTS ONLY: T b r n t t b t t s t h q s t n
FINAL PRODUCT: At burnt tibia: it heats the aqueous tone.

http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-18-homoconsonantism/

The passage I chose: “In addition, the entire effort to clone human embryos and then dismantle them in the name of science troubles some people on moral grounds.
The scientists in Oregon and the authors of the new report acknowledged that the clones they created could develop into babies if implanted in surrogate wombs. But like others in the stem cell field, they have said reproductive cloning would be unethical and irresponsible.”

Don’t share to your military.
Don’t wave aircraft when leaning in tank.
Don’t decipher
(so-called and unique).
And never read
or nod
your airplane
in Warthog.

Those appearances read
(looked on)
a ferocity of
“10 language-driven A-10 Thunderbolts”
that an Air Force
in red-eyed equivalent
recently was nodding
to rural grunts.

Flying year,
an old-fashioned enemy,
said the range
(a career),
happening
a Southern Gothic Cold War
of
conflicts
and Iraq online.
Afghanistan to be —
the Pentagon of Communist fleet cuts
should know —
almost as replete
as the defense spending itself.

But the aircraft teach
(at once)
subtlest and dynamic
since billions are over
as few years
of the Defense Department
officials
in November 2012
and as
Air Force
the diminutive aircraft.

F-35
Joint Strike Fighter’s
“close air support”
means
second-floor divestitures
dreaming over their friends
for military decision of
Air Force Chief of
Staff Gen. Mark Welsh
by Senate
Armed Services
Committees,
as well as
week
on choices or
by A-10s.  

Campaign,
an aircraft of
340,000 history in aviation,
considers to have studied the airplane to ground,
putting out to study
exactly what its pilots build
young
and look
a friend to such foes.

Used on
1,700 eyes
misused
from A-10s,
(dozens)
and lives,
the Iraq Afghanistan —
in emotional way —
tries a plane of
10 young air support platforms
that would
henceforward
be installed.

Among them:
have A-10 from Sen.
Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.,
looking illegally,
said
other news conferences
to happen
(Thursdays)
and leave small Sen.
John McCain, R-Arizs
to the A-10
pilots.

Are hearings,
looking
or happening
them to grow your A-10s,
eating your reviews or
eating your A-10
are also
asked upon.

On aircraft, the planet,
a local Army Gen.
Martin Dempsey shrugged
the chairman
had asked
(interesting).

But its Joint Chiefs of Staff
was quickly considered
with Air Force
officials of both
defense cuts
and choice
on
A-10 fleet.

“These is late budget pictures,”
said one
choice on the choices.
“How can such Air
Force Secretary Deborah Lee
James use committees
spur the Welsh?”

“They explained to be read
such
17-year Air Forces?”
another
“a full-spectrum fight”
watch.
“These missions should say
back to air support.”

The airplane also
recently
focused up
an air support
and things for A-10
means: to ask the way
on platforms who compete
the lovely comments
and said Air
Forces
to like air support of aircraft
on their F-35
Joint
Strike
Fighter.

The prompt:
“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.
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/oulipost-16-chimera/

Sources:
Base article:
Simon Denye. “Chinese officials warned of ‘10 forbidden behaviors’”. Chicago Tribune. 16 April 2014: 15.

Noun substitution article:
Christian Davenport. ” Plan to scrap Warthog fleet hits resistance: Supporters fight to save ‘great old friend’ as Pentagon looks to make spending cuts”. Chicago Tribune . 16 April 2014: 16.

Verb substitution article:
Christopher Borrelli. ” The future is (almost) now: Why sci-fi has rooted itself in technology and concerns of the short term, rather than the far-flung”.  Chicago Tribune . 16 April 2014: Arts + Entertainment, 4.

Adjective substitution article:
Chris Jones.  “Cicadas buzz within this Southern Gothic story”. Chicago Tribune. 16 April 2014: Arts + Entertainment, 5.

Author’s note: Man, English grammar is confusing.