Lipograms

[onanist]

I've always been fascinated by lipograms - poems or other texts that deliberately leave out specific letters. I remember stumbling my way through George Perec's La Disparation when I was at university - a whole novel written in French without once using the letter E. (Not bad considering it more or less excluded him from using any past tenses. Perec also wrote a 500-word palindrome, which I think is just showing off). Gilbert Adair's English translation, A void, also eschews the letter E.

This is hard stuff. I'm hopeless at writing lipograms in any form, let alone verse, and I forgot about them for a while. But someone sent me this tonight, an extract from a poem called Iris. I don't know who it's by, or I'd attribute it. Apologies to its owner, should she come across it...

In his digs, I kiss his lips. Lifting his shirt, impish, I sink.
First, I pinch his midriff. Blinking in his hindsight, I kiss
his thighs, lick his dick till it's stiff. I grip his fist, sliding it
till his mid-digit's clit-twiddling. I find his timing middling.
If I'm this mild Irish virgin's first?

Still frigging him, instinct insists I slip him right in.
His prick's big, thick, firm. It's sliding. It's riding. It's jiving.
It's writhing. It's hiring. It's firing. It's siring.
Bliss! I think this is it. His first innings! His brink!

Only one vowel.

So, who else can do this? Show us what you've got!

O.

 

[WickedEve]

Bloody Log

Tom drowns;
boy frowns,
rows on
to old town.

Tom rolls
on down,
only boy
knows how.

 

[Angeline]

Ooooooh a Challenge

ONAN this is stupid stuff!
Who can post fair words this way?
Such a folly calls for bluff,
I'll not try it, I should say!

Instinct holds within its grip
Want to parry your bold call
Still I worry I might trip
Grasping christcross not to fall!

Okay, that was not so rough
Which wordsmith a victim now?
A trio of stanzas--not too tough
Try whilst I fly off with quick bow...


(Take that scoundrel! )

 

[WickedEve]

Good one, Ange. I think I should try another one. My bloody log is kind of... disturbing. (Where do I come up with stuff like that? )

 

[onanist]

Sigh... That'll teach me to mix it with the pros. I'll just crawl back under my stone...

 

[Angeline]

I kinda liked it Eve, tragic though it was.

And onan, keep 'em coming buddy--your friend's lipogram was hysterical.

 

[Mythos50]

Frozen Frogs

Frogs found frozen
From wintry snow
What wisdom would allow
Wild’s child to find it so?

 

[Angeline]

Terence, this--as I mentioned--

is where I got the first line from the poem, Onan--it was A.E. Houseman, not William Carlos Williams though (I'm getting old~memory fades). Damn, I just reread it--I'd forgot how good it is: so light and funny and then progressively darker and profound. Yeah, I know it has Es, but I wanted to show you the poem.

A.E. Housman.
LXII

'TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.'

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

 

[karmadog]

I remember that poem, Ange. I like it, but I might hesitate to read poetry compared to arsenic and strychnine.

 

[Angeline]

Poison Poems

I remember that poem, Ange. I like it, but I might hesitate to read poetry compared to arsenic and strychnine.

Um yes. But it was only the first line. And there were no Es in mine, darnit!

 

[onanist]

A real cracker, Ange. Thanks for posting it. Now I know where those lines about Mithridates come from.

(And it would be churlish to deny you that first line, for sure, given the virtuoso display that followed it. I just tried to do something similar and failed dismally. But then, I haven't written a poem since I was 9. Maybe I should go back to school...)

O.

 

[Guest]

Canadian author Christian Bok has written an entire book using only one vowel for each chapter. It's called "Eunoia" and you can find his work in google.

I find it better to read out loud, sometimes it's beautiful and other just plain funny.

 

[OT]

Canadian author Christian Bok has written an entire book using only one vowel for each chapter. It's called "Eunoia" and you can find his work in google.

I find it better to read out loud, sometimes it's beautiful and other just plain funny.

WOW. I just went here:
http://www.ubu.com/contemp/bok/eunoia_final.html
(it took me a minute to figure out that I had to let my mouse hover over the little circles to get the text to appear)

Very impressive stuff.
Coherent and clever.