Fraggy Forms and Styles of Communication
The following are some of the various forms and presentation styles employed by our crew in their ever-changing approach to the frag. Here you'll find the name of the particular style, a brief description, and even an example. Feel free to explore what others have added as further examples within a particular form.
Example:
Fortune Cookie
submitted by dangermaus
This form comes from the popular
practice of adding the words "in bed"
to the end of a fortune. In this version,
you would write a piece as normal, then
add the aforementioned phrase to the
end.
You'll see it changes the entire meaning
of
the piece.
Example:
The hawks are calling,
You watch them
circling
The sun beats down
You feel the sweat
drying
In bed.
Haiku
submitted by casler
(from http://www.toyomasu.com)
Haiku is one of the most important form of
traditional japanese poetry. Haiku
is, today, a 17-syllable verse form consisting of
three metrical units of 5, 7,
and 5 syllables. Since early days, there has been
confusion between the three
related terms Haiku, Hokku and
Haikai. The term hokku literally
means "starting verse", and was the first starting
link of a much longer chain
of verses known as haika. Because the
hokku set the tone for the
rest of the poetic chain, it enjoyed a privileged
position in haikai poetry,
and it was not uncommon for a poet to compose a
hokku by itself without
following up with the rest of the chain.
Largely through the efforts of Masaoka
Shiki, this independence was formally
established in the 1890s through the creation of
the term haiku. This new
form of poetry was to be written, read and
understood as an independent poem,
complete in itself, rather than part of a longer
chain.
Strictly speaking, then, the history of haiku
begins only in the last years of
the 19th century. The famous verses of such
Edo-period (1600-1868) masters as
Basho, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi
Issa are properly referred
to as hokku and must be placed in the
perspective of the history of haikai
even though they are now generally read as
independent haiku. In HAIKU for PEOPLE,
both terms will be treated equally! The
distinction between hokku and haiku
can be handled
by using the terms Classical Haiku and
Modern Haiku.
Modern Haiku.
The history of the modern haiku dates from
Masaoka Shiki's reform, begun
in 1892, which established haiku as a new
independent poetic form. Shiki's reform
did not change two traditional elements of
haiku: the division of 17 syllables
into three groups of 5, 7, and 5 syllables and
the inclusion of a seasonal theme.
Kawahigashi Hekigoto carried Shiki's
reform further with two proposals:
Example:
a water's wetness
essentially all undry
dreams of the desert
kernel method
submitted by cachilders
please be aware: this form is not so new as when i first wrote it, but there remains room for improvement. so please, let me know if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions.
my theory is that most thoughts can be conveyed in five words or less. so the first exercise with the kernel method will be to compose a thought of five words or less. i like to write down the first thing that comes to mind, but you may prefer to put serious thought into this process. as an example, i have written my five (or fewer in this case) word thought -
"conjured magic with feet"
while perhaps not the best thought ever, it will do for the sake of example.
Now comes the formula. I will take the first letter of each of the words that compose my brief thought and assign them a numerical value. the value is the location of the letter within the alphabet. so for my example, it will be:
"c" = 3
"m" = 13
"w" = 23
"f" = 6
so i have the numbers. now what?
imagine each number is its own line of the poem that i am writing. the number reflects the quantity of syllables that will be written. so for this example, the poem i will write can be broken down as 3 - 13 - 23 - 6. this is similar to the method employed by haiku, but there will be greater fluctuation from poem to poem using this style. as a side note, a line with 23 syllables will hardly fit on one line, but don't worry, you can indent the runoff and treat it as a single thought.
now it comes to what you write. imagine each word of your original thought is a foundation for each corresponding line of your new poem. from there, you write whatever image that word conjures in your mind, just be sure not to use the word itself.
so for my example, i will write 3 syllables that spawn from the word "conjured", then 13 from "magic, and so on, resulting in the following:
made to be
some essential wisdom, long forgotten,
uncovered
perhaps in time we will have the strength to use
these
things we have discovered,
but for now we dream
of cold floors and dull aches
"with" turned out to be a big giant line, but luckily, "with" is a very generic word that lends itself to all sorts of thoughts.
in the end, my poem bears some, at least i think, resemblance to the original thought, which served as the seed and rules for its creation.
now you scrap the kernel thought sentence and tout your new poem. maybe you can use the kernel as the title, though at fragx this will not work for thoughts greater than three words.
don't feel too limited by my five word restriction. it is more of a suggestion, and i think it will help keep your poem more focused. ultimately, you can make your kernel thought as long as you want. i do warn however that the method could grow tedious for re- realizing a novel or epic poem. i would, however, be interested in seeing a traditional haiku used as the kernel for a far larger work.
- c.a. childers, 2002 (first revised draft)
Example:
made to be
some essential wisdom, long forgotten,
uncovered
perhaps in time we will have the strength to use
these
things we have discovered,
but for now we dream
of cold floors and dull aches
language poetry
submitted by juv3nal
A relatively recent "style" or movement of poetry characterized by a rejection of the typical model of the poem as communicative act (from poet to a reader/audience) through which a message/experience/emotion is conveyed. This is borne out through a conscious manipulation of syntax/narrative tropes/rhetorical devices so as to resist a conventional lyric or narrative reading of the work. The theory is that through such a breaking down of conventional modes of poetic expression, language poetry calls in to question the ways in which those modes are socially determined. Language poetry in many ways is actually best typified by the work of Gertrude Stein though she precedes the formation of the "movement" by quite a bit. Notable practitioners include Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein and Lyn Hejinian.
Example:
excerpt from My Life
οΎ
She is lying on her stomach with one eye closed,
driving a toy truck along the road she has
cleared with her fingers. Then the tantrum broke
out, blue, without a breath of air....You could
increase the height by making lateral additions
and building over them a sequence of steps,
leaving tunnels, or windows, between the blocks,
and I did. I made signs to them to be as quiet
as possible. but a word is a bottomless pit. It
became magically pregnant and one day split open,
giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a
football.
-Lyn Hejinian
missing letter
submitted by succumbus
not sure if this counts as a style or not, but I know I have done this before and had a lot of fun with it. Basically you write about anything at all, but you completely exclude a letter, some letters are really easy like the letter "b" or "k" but other's are almost impossible and a lot more fun, such as "E" tried that one and almost went crazy with it! My example is without any "e"s just to prove it's possible.
Example:
you ran away. from him, from pain. I can stand with you. any man hurts you, I will kill him if you wish it. you don't know how I worship you. you my companion.
paradelle
submitted by somethings)required
The paradelle is a French form of fixed poetry;
and, to get right to it, this form makes forms
like the sestina look like a snow day.
Paradelles are poems of four stanzas, each
containing six lines. While there is no
restriction in terms of rhythm, line length seems
to remain relatively similar due to the
parameters of the form.
THE FIRST THREE STANZAS:
The first three stanzas of a paradelle are
constructed in the same way. The first line of
each stanza must be repeated for the second line;
the third line must be repeated for the fourth
line. I like to call these core lines
the "parents". In the strictest execution of the
form, the line is repeated exactly. I, however,
like to vary these repetitions up a little bit
punctuation-wise.
(NOTE: using 'forms of words' as substitutions
doesn't work in a paradelle at all really,
because of how the form progresses.)
So far, so good, if a little repetitive; but this
is where it gets rather 'tricky'.
In lines five and six of each stanza, (or lines
5&6, 11&12, and 17&18 of the poem) one must take
the individual words from the "parents" (lines
one and three) of that same stanza and
*rearrange* them to form the fifth and sixth
line. Each word must be rearranged, because it
*must* be used once but *only* once for each time
it appears in the first and third lines.
How the words are rearranged is up to you. There
is no need to keep only, for example, line one
words on line five. There is no particular rule
about where to put the (one) line break in the
rearrangement, nor is there a necessity to create
completely new arrangements. Words can appear
next to words they appeared next to before.
So, if each original line is represented by the
line number where it first appears and 'X'
represents rearrangement, then the first three
stanzas of a paradelle would look like this:
1
1
3
3
1X3 part A
1X3 part B
7
7
9
9
7X9 part A
7X9 part B
13
13
15
15
13X15 part A
13X15 part B
If the above looks a bit like math, it's because
it can definitely feel more than a bit like
genetics, especially the first time out. But, if
you think of it, the rearrangement is like the
mixing of the "parents" word DNA-- it forms two
new things out of the old elements. I call these
the "child" lines.
Some tips in this portion of a paradelle's
construction:
--- Keep it as simple. You might find yourself
needing to add little words here and there in
order to facilitate some thought or phrase you'd
like to appear in the rearranged portions
Shorter sentences are very often easier to manage
in this regard.
--- Check off your words. I've used both the
cross-out method and the rearraging on a word
processing program method. I find the second
works best for initially constructing the
rearrangement, while the first works best for a
sort of final check. Because of the construction
of the fourth and final stanza, a final check
that each word has been used once and only once
(for each time it appears) can be invaluable.
THE FOURTH STANZA:
If you've not yet given up, the fourth stanza is
basically taking your practice run at word
rearrangement to the next level. Imagine for a
moment that your three sets of parents got tired
of their kids and instead decided to form a
commune with each other, have an orgy, and
produce six new kids made up of all of them!
Twisted?
I know, but that is basically the fourth stanza
in a nutshell--you do the same kind of
rearrangement you did for lines 5 & 6 of each
stanza, but all at once.
In other words, the fourth stanza is six lines
made of the words from every "parent" line in
stanzas one through three all rearranged together-
- using *every* word once, but *only* once for
each time it appeared in an individual "parent"
line.
Using the same method of representation as the
last 'chart', the fourth stanza would look like
this:
1x3x7x9x13x15 Part A
1x3x7x9x13x15 Part B
1x3x7x9x13x15 Part C
1x3x7x9x13x15 Part D
1x3x7x9x13x15 Part E
1x3x7x9x13x15 Part F
Once again, as with the first three stanzas,
there are no restrictions with regard to how much
or little you rearrange all the words *or* where
you choose to put any one of the five line
breaks. However, there must be five line breaks,
because the fourth and last stanza must also
contain six lines.
The 'tips' above concerning each individual
stanza become almost required for the fourth
stanza, unless the construction has been very
simple or you are able to do things like multiply
pi times your weight in pennies in your head.
In addition, here are some
cautionary/commiseratory side notes about
constructing the fourth stanza:
--- Any additions or eliminations of a word from
the fourth stanzas 'gene pool' of words means
also adding or eliminating that word to both
a "parent" line (and it's echo) AND a
rearranged "child" line (either 5 or 6 of that
stanza).
--- Add and eliminate as sparingly as possible
and make all the edits *as you go*. Thinking
that you'll make all the corrections to stanzas
one through three at the end has been known to
result in paper shredding incidents. :)
So, by now you're thinking either
"How Fun!" or
"Why in the world would anyone even do this?"
If you are in the latter camp, you should know
that even trying to do a paradelle can be a great
way to overcome writer's block. It's a useful
sort of exercise in not only patience and
creative editing, but viewing common words
differently.
And finally, even if you don't create a paradelle
down to the fourth and last stanza; creating a
section or two in the style of the first three
stanzas is a striking way to play with lines you
find you just adore.
Example:
The girls circle you. Like flies to honey,
the girls circle. You like flies to honey,
just like you are slow to shoo away.
Just like you are slow to shoo, away
you shoo to circle the honey girls.
Like flies to like; you are just slow away.
Then, I am ant; slower still and walking. But,
then I am ant, slower still and... walking!
But
why? Is my quaint cadence silence here?
Why is my quaint cadence silence here?
But here, and ant, my 'why?' is quaint.
Walking slower cadence still; then, I am
silence.
Know: I have wings already. Though I walk,
know I have wings already. Though I walk,
it seems, my slowest--hope is for the
sweetest.
It seems my slowest hope is for the sweetest.
Though it seems I know sweetest walk; already
my hope is for the slowest wings I have.
Like ant, I know walking away to cadence;
and the circle girls are just quaint wings for
shoo.
Still, I hope my walk is already slow like
honey;
to have you slower, but then sweetest.
Though it seems my silence flies the slowest,
why I am here is you.
Sonnenizio
submitted by peachfiend
The sonnenizio is a form invented by Kim Addonizio. The rules of the form are these: begin with a line from someone else's sonnet; repeat a word from that line in each succeeding line of the poem. The sonnenizio is 14 lines long and ends with a closing couplet. Some exceptions: the word selected from the chosen sonnet line can be altered. That is, if the word chosen is, for example, "love," it can appear in any form, including: loved, lover, loves, etc. It can also appear as part of another word: "can" used in "cantankerous," "candid," or "cantor."
Example:
"Sonnenizio on a Line from Millay"
by Kim Addonizio
Love me no more, now let the god
depart;
that's what gods are good at, coming
down
to grace us with a glimpse, then leave
us. A god
isn't much of a god if he stays
near, close enough
to really kiss. Just try to
keep your lips on his. Any god
worth his salt
will kill you soon as look at you. And a
god
who'd spare you, a god who'd let you
in,
the other gods wouldn't stand for
it.
They'd destroy him--or worse, make him
human,
incapable of a god's gestures: no
lightning, no quickening a dead heart.
A god
like that, fallen, weak, defeated--
who
wouldn't grow to despise him? Better
to let
him go, in all his aloof beauty. As I
let you
go, dear one, and will not cry.
Sonnet (fragxerian)
submitted by casler
While it can be argued that the relatively strict, and certainly well-established rules for the composition of the sonnet are precisely what makes a sonnet a sonnet, I contend that in nearly any circumstance of a formal system, there is room for variation--even if the window is very small (keyword - small(er)).
The rules are reminiscent of the classical sonnet
form, with a few contemporary changes.
1) We've dropped the pentameter and changed it to
tetrameter, with a *much* heavier focus on trochee
and spondee (the iamb becomes equivalent, not the
default).
What once might read
the days of old and winding down now
dead
is shortened to
days now dead were dying down old
reflecting shorter sound bytes, shorter attention
spans, and less florid metre.
2) We've shortened the line number to twelve from fourteen. Less screen geography (the computer, especially the monitor, now influences the display) forces us to do more with less.
3) The refocused emphasis (bringing more spondee and trochee, and maybe even more double-iambs into the game), changing it from even syllables to odd, along with the shortened metrical length of the sentence and the fewer sentences in total length, well, brings a fresher, more powerful, more concise perspective on what the author offers.
4) The piece begins with a first line of a heroic couplet, and ends with the second line of the couplet. This provides both an introduction, and a very tidy conclusion, along with a built in, circular quality tying the beginning the ending and back to the beginning.
5) the fragxerian Sonnet offers the classicist with a fresh and contemporary model to work with, perhaps allowing for a natural bridge between the mature, more formal universe of the sonnet, and the brash, energetic potentiality of the contemporary.
Example:
i am an albatross crashing
parties, gates, and sparrow's bedrooms
hiding their reluctance to host
behind that home is where the heart
is needlepoint upon the wall.
sorrowful and sagging spirit,
dashing respectability
upon the stones and reefy shore
of my boundless propensity
to be forgotten, though kindly,
from peacock' and robin' guest lists
teary-eyed albatross splashing.
test
submitted by casler
test
Example:
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The Cut Ups Method
submitted by cachilders
by William S. Burroughs
The method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page. Like this page. Now cut down the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 . . . one two three four. Now rearrange the sections placing section four with section one and section two with section three. And you have a new page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes something quite different-cutting up political speeches is an interesting excercise-in any case you will find that it says something and something quite definite. Take any poet or writer you fancy. Here, say, or poems you have read over many times. The words have lost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like. As many Shakespeare Rimbaud poems as you like. Tristan Tzara said: "Poetry is for everyone." And Andre Breton called him a cop and expelled him from the movement. Say it again: "Poetry is for everyone." Poetry is a place and it is free to all cut up Rimbaud and you are in Rimbaud's place. Here is a Rimbaud poem cut up:
Visit of memories. Only your dance and your voice house. On the suburban air improbable desertions . . . all harmonic pine for strife.
The great skies are open. Candor of vapor and tent spitting blood laugh and drunken penance.
Promenade of wine perfume opens slow bottle.
The great skies are open. Supreme bugle burning flesh children to mist.
Cut-ups are for everyone. Anybody can make cut-ups. It is experimental in the sense of being something to do. Right here write now. Not something to talk and argue about. Greek philosophers assumed logically that an object twice as heavy as another object would fall twice as fast. It did not occur to them to push the two objects off the table and see how they fall. Shakespeare Rimbaud live in their words. Cut the word lines and you will hear their voices. Cut-ups often come through as code messages with special meaning for the cutter. Table tapping? Perhaps. Certainly an improvement on the usual deplorable performances of contacted poets through a medium. Rimbaud announces himself, to be followed by some excruciatingly bad poetry. Cut Rimbaud's words and you are assured of good poetry at least if not personal appearance.
All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else? Use of scissors renders the process explicit and subject to extension and variation. Clear classical prose can be composed entirely of rearranged cut-ups. Cutting and rearranging a page of written words introduces a new dimension into writing enabling the writer to turn images in cinematic variation. Images shift sense under the scissors smell images to sound sight to sound sound to kinesthetic. This is where Rimbaud was going with his color of vowels. And his "systematic derangement of the senses." The place of mescaline hallucination: seeing colors tasting sounds smelling forms. The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for seventy years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredicatble factors of passersby and juxtapositon cut-ups. And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same. The best writings seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut-up method was made explicit - all writing is in fact cut-ups; I will return to this point-had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.
Example:
the music is simple, quiet but draped gently with
the
languid
from the soft light that paints inhabitants. they
move with
in
tufts of smoke rise above the drifting quietly on
a breeze
furniture, above the sofas and a higher place
methodical. it seems
to bleed bodies of the
rooms
the wide roo
m yellow. Thin significant shifts,
each
m
ismatched pieces of that threatens to carry them
to
chairs, none like the others,