Boolean Poem: Poetic Forms
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the boolean poem, a mix of found and collaborative poetry.
While looking through the oulipo entry in John Drury's The Poetry Dictionary, I found a mention of the boolean poem. For the boolean poem, poets make a new poem using words common to two poems.
I'm not sure if I'm interpreting it the right way, but I'm taking that to mean that I can use any words in two poems to create a new poem. That's what my example below does. However, it may mean that a poet can only use the words that appear in each poem, which seems a little limiting, but...maybe.
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Play with poetic forms!
Poetic forms are fun poetic games, and this digital guide collects more than 100 poetic forms, including more established poetic forms (like sestinas and sonnets) and newer invented forms (like golden shovels and fibs).
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Here's my attempt at a boolean poem:
"Cosmonautics and the World," by Robert Lee Brewer
It was clear the megagalactic
mask we wear said nothing
in counting our fully dressed sighs
with myriad subtleties.
We smile, but not at the moment,
this sheltered darkness with torn
and bleeding knees--let the world
dream in homeostasis (curled
up and gone to sleep) otherwise.
[For this example, I used "We Wear the Mask," by Paul Laurence Dunbar, and "Going Home," by Wislawa Szymborska.]
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
