Category: Pulverbatch

May 12, 2005 /

David Flora steps up with a terzanelle of his own–ignoring word count, but with fantastic use of full-line rhyme as a substitute for repetition and slick iambic pentameter (in which terzanelles are really supposed to be).

Fixed-format poetry was just one more subgenre of constrained writing, which is probably why I find old forms so much more interesting than those of modern and postmodern poetry. Constraints like the terzanelle provide so much opportunity for innovation, as Holly and Flora have just demonstrated. I still think the best explanation of the value therein comes from Constrained.org’s FAQ:

“Constraints set additional challenges to the writer. Writing to a constraint is like solving a puzzle. Graceful solutions have a pleasing feel – like watching the moves of a chess master – on top of their value as stories.”

I’m always delighted to rediscover that my friends are masterful, in some way or many.

May 11, 2005 /

In other Anacrusis-tangent news, I’m happy to report that Holly threw my gauntlet right back in my face and did, in fact, prove me wrong. I reprint her story-poem here, with her permission, to keep it from getting lost to the winds of LJ-feed comment rot:

The Burger King is fat with youth,
With adolescent pageantry,
With shining eyes revealing truth.

He’s fifty-two; unagingly
He lounges over golden thrones
With adolescent pageantry.

Unwrinkled cheeks, uncreaking bones;
But nothing sinster to dread.
He lounges over golden thrones.

No bloody baths, no gingerbread.
He chargrills souls to golden brown
But nothing sinister to dread.

Adorned with shining paper crown
His sceptre’s high; his forehead clear;
He chargrills souls to golden brown

And swallows them with ginger beer.
The Burger King is fat with youth,
His sceptre’s high, his forehead clear
With shining eyes revealing truth.

Terza

May 11, 2005 /

Aahhhh, I can’t do it! I did manage to write this within the constraints I imposed, but it ends up too incoherent to be a real story, so I’m sacrificing the basic premise in order to satisfy the extra ones. That’s weak. Ergo this isn’t going in Anacrusis, but I’ll gladly dump it on you here, where apparently I have no standards.

I no longer think it’s possible to write a terzanelle in 101 words that’s still a good story, and I’m positive it can’t be done in meter. I’d love it if you proved me wrong.

There’s little to Terza but her frame.
She rolls. Nine sixes again:
at the Thousand-Year Club they’re all the same.

They gambled away bad luck, when
they thought they were wise.
(She rolls nine sixes again.)

When age dulled their eyes,
they’d gamble that away as well,
they thought! They were wise.

Terza chose to lose Hell
(she’d be different here);
they gambled that away as well.

Risk can’t be where fear
is not. Alone she’d be different; here
she’s one more clone.

There’s little to Terza, but her frame
is not alone at the Thousand-Year Club:
they’re all the same.

May 9, 2005 /

I have to run this query that returns a ridiculous result, at least two million rows, and output it to a file with Oracle’s little command-line client, SQLPLUS. I can’t get it to stop printing the results on the screen as it writes to that file, though, which means that there’s this endless speed-scrolling text in a big window behind my little browser here.

I feel like I should be telling my fellow superspies that “I’m almost done hacking the 256-bit upload! Activate the crypto-matrix cybertrap on my mark!“

Obligatory reflection

May 5, 2005 /

Thanks for everybody who called, wrote or commented to send me birthday wishes, and to all the people who showed up at my partylike entity. You’re all great! And I am made happy by material possessions: DC gave me more of the awesome restricted-access Actors Theatre notebooks, and Maria gave me about a jillion books and DVDs and an ice cream cake and apparently something else that hasn’t arrived yet, and Lisa gave me–exclamation marks!–my first-ever illustrated story! (Of Fortado.)

Despite my inexplicable knee-jerk belief of the past several months that I’ve been 26, I’m 24. Tonight I sent off the third-to-last thing I have to do to graduate. Almost done.

It doesn’t honestly feel like I’ve lived in Louisville that long. I feel so much more competent now, in so many areas, than I did two years ago: working with humans, writing code, writing, traveling, using public transportation, applying the principles of aikido to solve nonphysical conflicts–all the things I want to spend my whole life doing.

Also, I think this is the year my brain starts dying!

Actually I am quite good about commenting

April 29, 2005 /

I spent most of the past week and almost all of the last 24 hours writing code for my Master’s degree project, because I’m a terrible person. And then today I came in to work on zero sleep for the first time. This should be different.

On the bus here, I had a dozing dream about falling out onto a huge slick plain of PHP and whitespace. I knew it was stuff I’d written, but I couldn’t figure out where in the whole scheme it fit. I was lost! It could be miles to the nearest comment! It was pretty scary.

I have (wisely, I think) decided not to write an anacrusis about this.

April 29, 2005 /

Been a while since I pulled one of these. With a little luck, this is my last school all-nighter ever.

April 25, 2005 /

My boss in her cube, cussing into the phone in theatrical Spanish: maybe the best thing ever?

(I should add that I adore my boss.)