[Newspoetry] Calendrome

[Paul Kotheimer]

hi all


i suggest that Dirk et al christen this new form the "Calendrome" or the 
"Calendral," which is slightly less cheeky.


love paul


On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, William
Gillespie wrote:

> Wm--
> 
> (and other Newspoets)--
> 
> If I told you that a provisional title for the form was an
> "annual"--would that help?
> 
> O.k. here's the scoop:
> 
> 3 major constraints, the fourth was an afterthought:
> 
> 1. 12 lines (one for each month of the year)
> 
> 2. Rhyme scheme mirrors the rhyme scheme of the months: so January
> rhymes with February; May = half-rhyme with July; September,
> November, December = 2 syllable rhymes, with October = a 1 syllable
> rhyme with the "ber" of the other three. In the second "stanza" of my
> poem, I tried to duplicate the syllable counts better than I did in
> the first "stanza" (so: the first couplet = a three syllable rhyme
> etc.). Other lines = no rhymes (this caused some difficulty because
> some of my original end-words had to be changed because they looked
> as if they were supposed to be rhymes or half-rhymes)
> 
> So far, nothing too onerous in this form, but then comes constraint
> 
> 3. each line's letter-count = the number of days in the month. So:
> first line = 31 letters, second line 28 letters, etc. Spaces don't
> count, punctuation don't count, numbers (as in the '80' of stanza 2)
> do count (this not a Joe Futrelle ASCII 12-character poem thing).
> This proved to be the real pain-inducing constraint which also
> explains the sometimes curious syntax, diction, subject matter, etc.
> I'm not sure I would do this form again, but who knows: I did it
> twice already. Anyway, I thought it was an appropriate way to end the
> poem-a-day  for a year site.
> 
> 4. Title = 12 letters. Last minute addition, not sure it's that
> important.
> 
> There you have it: the Annual (or Yearling, or Yearlet)--don't like
> any of these proposed names, so if you've got a better one. And
> remember that stanza 2 is a much more accurate version of what I was
> shooting for. In my first attempt lines 5 & 7 appear to rhyme with
> the last four lines and that's bad.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Newspoetry maillist  -  Newspoetry at ganymede.isdn.uiuc.edu
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> 

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