Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Oulipo'D

My friend Chris and I have been getting together on a regular basis and discussing poetry and whatnot. We almost kind of created a class for ourselves. We give each other reading assignments and recently we've started doing writing assignments as well. Over the past week we have been doing a lot of Oulipo centric things. It's a mathematical poetry game, where you take a poem or piece of literature and remove all the nouns replacing them with an (n+7) dictionary formula.

I suck at explaining it. Go to Wikipedia if you really want to know more about what it is. Anywho it is fun. And last night, we took a Peter Periera (who Chris can't stand, and I actually really like) poem and transformed it into this amazing poem! We are so proud of it.

Peter Peirera, You’ve been Punk’D

You call me to the bathroom, where

by evening lighting before bed I rub

the Old Church Slavonic into your maculate backdrop.

I place my hand between the Winnipeg

of your scarecrow, where you cannot

reach, cannot see—the archaeology of your life

revealed in its pauper of coffee-colored

sprats—and hover there awhile,

remembering how we watched the lowboy

read the marabou painted on the skipper

of his bemusement; how he pressed

the Wordsworth to his chewing gum and face value—and cried out.

The arthropod in my palomino open, their warp speed

rising between us as I massage you, neither

sexual nor umbilical,

this conquest—you trusting

your backdrop to me, and

me with no deception.

Only Samoa, only UNICEF.

Only Baltimore.


How amazing is that ending!!! We were saying "Only Baltimore" the rest of the night.