wordplay
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I adore wordplay. Puns, lipograms, anagrams, acrostics --
anything which uses words not just for their meanings but for their
other qualities. I especially like combining the constraints imposed by
these forms with the constraints of poetry.
- anthm
- My contribution to a group of lipogrammatic "translations"
of our national song. If you think this is cool, go look up all this
stuff in D*jaN*ws (by its titular string).
- pangramatical
- A limerick. The text explains the aim, here, so it's
self-referential.
- searching for deeper meaning
- Obliquely self-referential prose. Also an explanation of my
take on poetry.
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pastiche
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Most people call this parody, but pastiche is the strict term.
The sincerest form of flattery.
- Green Eggs and Ham and a Light Beer
- A followup to a list of pseudoseuss book titles.
- what I thought Portia said last night
- Written after getting rained on while watching an outdoor
performance of The Merchant of Venice.
- It's all ethanol to me
- A followup I had to write, because the subject line
screamed "Billy Joel" to me.
- Model FAQ
- A FAQ for t.b in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan. If you
don't read t.b, you might not get all the injokes.
- Flowers
- A followup to a poem consisting mostly of a rhymed list of
flowers. This is a pastiche of a pastiche: the form is after Tom
Lehrer's song The Elements, which is itself to the tune of "Modern
Major General", as in the above. Some good followups to this were
posted.
- Nothing here but net
- The obligatory Monty Python imitation.
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poetry
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I post a lot of poems. Usually they're inspired by other
posts, or things people say to me, or interesting words or ideas I
hear. All of my poems either rhyme or scan, and most frequently they do
both. (Unless they're haiku or tanka, which adhere to strict syllable
counts.) I have no patience with pseudo-artsy free-form verse. The
structure is a large part of the point.
sonnets | double
dactyls | other verse forms | obituaries
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sonnets
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- I used to think that a sonnet was, by definition, fourteen
lines in iambic pentameter a la Shakespeare. Then I read Vikram Seth's Golden
Gate which is written entirely in sonnets of the style that
Alexander Pushkin used in Eugene Onegin -- tetrametric feet,
and each quatrain has a different rhyme scheme -- and fell in love with
this form. Some I've written are in one form, some in the other. And
I'll probably experiment with other styles in the future.
- deconstruction
- A sonnet about going through my stuff in preparation for
moving.
- secrets like a knife
- Another Pushkinian sonnet about shared secrets and close
friends.
- Elegy
- Yes, I felt depressed and bitter when I wrote this.
- Valentine
- A Valentine's Day sonnet.
- Ode to Roswell
- A sonnet written after visiting the International UFO
Museum in Roswell, NM. I was just passing through, I swear.
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double dactyls
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- Clinton/Lewinsky dactyl
- Political poem, written mostly because I noticed that a
throwaway comment was of perfect meter to use in a double dactyl.
- Dakota Dactyl
- A double dactyl consisting entirely of North Dakota city
names. It was a followup to somebody's post, "A list of every city in
North Dakota" which was, well, what you'd expect.
- no holds bard
- Who wrote Shakespeare's plays? Double dactyl.
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other verse forms
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- I sleep with the fishes
- A little rhyme I like.
- moomgarden
- Nonsense verse inspired by a typographical error. Such is
my life.
- yum yum
- Silly little poem inspired by someone else's misspelling.
- Tachyglossidae
- A bit of doggerel about spiny anteaters, written because
the Latin terms in a previous posting caught my eye.
- cerulean
- A silly verse written for a group post with the common
theme "blue sky".
- English Royalty Haiku
- Written when Prince Andrew was caught in a compromising
position with Koo Stark. I did this solely for the bad pun.
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celebrity obituaries
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One standard art form in t.b is the memorial haiku, which
evolved into memorial Burma Shaves, memorial limericks, and so on. I
enjoyed the challenge of making a topical joke in a strict form, but
these may not be to everybody's taste.
The memorial verses
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stories
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Short bits of fiction, more or less.
- fire and ice
- A love story.
- incompatibility
- Same story, different characters.
- the grass is always greener
- Desire and temptation.
- My demon lover
- Temptation and desire.
- secret language
- Our habits betray us.
- Remembering Susan
- This one is true. I think it's one of the best things I've
written.
- desert sky
- Written for a group post with a common theme of "sky".
Mostly true.
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t.bobs
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Gatherings of talk.bizarre people are called bobs, or t.bobs
(in the tradition of FAT.BOB, the First Annual Talk.Bizarre Outrageous
Blowout, which was before my time). I attended three really superb
t.bobs:
HOTT.BOB
(Huge Outdoorsy Taos T.BOB, August 1995, Las Vegas, NM)
- Report #1
- Things I brought back.
- Report #2
- To be sung to the tune of Marty Robbins's "El Paso".
- Report #3
- People I met.
MOUNT.BOB
(Most Of Us Naked T.BOB, summer 1997, Colorado Springs, CO)
- Boustrophedon
- A limerick in response to someone who used the word
'boustrophedonic' in conversation at the bob.
- Condimentia
- Another ditty inspired by a comment at the bob.
FROST.BOB (Frozen
Realm O'the Senses T.BOB, February 1998, Quebec City, Canada)
- Report #1
- Things I did.
- Report #2
- Impressions. I'm not sure I actually posted this; it
doesn't look finished, to me, but I found it in my directory.
- Photos
- I brought my digital camera, whee!
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