#3 (The Possimpible)

I have decided that I need to learn how to master the possimpible. You may be asking yourself right now what the "possimpible" is, having never heard the term before. This term comes from Barney Stinson, a character on one of my favorite tv shows, How I Met Your Mother. He invents the term "possimpible" for his video resume, which details how awesome he truly is. He creates this word because he claims to transcend both the possible and impossible, which creates the possimpible. As he teaches one of the other characters how to make an equally awesome video resume, he explains that inventing words is a key way to getting hired. I'm not sure if this would work in real life during a job search, but it did get me thinking about word choice in poetry. We have been working this week with villanelles, which is a form in which word choice is key because of the rhyming structure. As we did the exercise in class in which we created rhymes for one word, I discovered just how difficult it can be to choose a word that fits the requirements of both rhyming and logical sense. When putting together rhymes for a villanelle, one of the greatest challenges is to avoid sounding cheesy. Straight rhymes on simple, one syllable words often create a sing song effect that should only be heard in Kindergarten. However, I think, upon mastering the rhyme structure of a villanelle, that this could be a very powerful form. I need to keep practicing branching away from the simple rhymes into more complex slanted rhymes. I also know that we often create new words in poetry, and I think some interesting combinations can be used to help the rhymes along in a villanelle. Once the rhymes have mastered, I think I can claim to have truly mastered the possimipible.

#2 (The Randomized Sonnet)

This is the experiment with a poetry anthology, using random lines to form a sonnet.

Here are the random lines that I flipped to:

Such the maiden gem
Three years she grew in sun and shower
If by dull rhymes our English must be chained
Do not go gentle into that good night
Like a convalescent, I took the hand
The squirrel bounced down a branch
once their fruit is picked
Talking in bed ought to be easiest
calm is the morn without a sound
I kenning through astronomy divine
Thy nobler part, which but to name
Beyond a mortal man impassioned fear
And we, that make merry in the Room
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you
They sing their dearest songs
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me
The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Whose converted smile of hours and days, suppose
Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Our lines avoided tragedy


The Randomized Sonnet

Three years she grew in sun and shower,
such the maiden gem,
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me.
Like a convalescent, I took the hand.
(talking in bed ought to be easiest)
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you
And we, that make merry in the Room-
beyond a mortal man impassioned fear.
Thy nobler part, which but to name.
I kenning through astronomy divine.
Whose converted smile of hours and days, suppose
do not go gentle into that good night.

If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
our lines avoid tragedy.

#1 (A Syllabic Pantoum)

So, most of the pantoums that we have studied in class have a decent amount of syllables per line, usually considered an average count when compared with long lines that extend past the length of a standard page and those short lines that only have a couple syllables. I chose to accept my mission of writing a pantoum with only a few syllables in the syllable count. Keeping the pantoum a standard syllable count, especially a short one, proved to be quite difficult. This was mostly because the flexibilty of the lines was highly restricted. When I had to repeat a line, it was very difficult to change it in any way in order for the line to make sense in comparison with the other lines of that stanza. Also, the subject of the poem had to be quite simplistic, and very few dramatic turns could be initiated. I don't think that I would ever choose to write a syllabic panoum again, but this was an interesting experiment.

Sylabbic Pantoum

The red sky
bleeds tonight.
Under the ground,
the mole hides.

Bleed tonight-
remember
the mole hides
until dawn.

Remember
the black sky,
until dawn
rises up.

The black sky
dies but it
rises up
every day.

And it dies
under the ground
every day:
the red sky.