Poetic Redundancy / Haikuisation

This constraint was illustrated by Raymond Queneau in an essay entitled “La redondance chez Phane Arm�” (in La litterature potentielle (Gallimard, 1973) also a section of his essay “Potential Literature” as trans. by Warren Motte in Oulipo: A primer of potential literature (Dalkey Archive, 1998)). He describes a means of reducing a poem to its “luminous elixir” by taking away all but the rhyming sections of a poem and creating a sort of haiku effect of brevity. He uses the sonnets of Stephane Mallarm� (hence the title of the essay) as an example of the procedure and notes that the constraint produces interesting new poems and also works to shed light on the original poem.

Marcel Benabou offers a variation — head-to-tail or double haiku — in which one attachs the first word(s) of each line to the last word(s) (”Tete-a-queue ou double hai ka�” La litterature potentielle (Gallimard, 1973)).

For other examples see:

Mathews, Harry. “Poetic Redundancy.” Oulipo Compendium (Atlas, 1998).

Latis. “Essais de la m�thode du T.S. Queneau dur quelques-uns de ses sonnets.” La litterature potentielle (Gallimard, 1973).

Lescure, Jean. “Compl�ment � la redondance chez phane-arm�.” La litterature potentielle (Gallimard, 1973).

My examples of both variations follow…

“Aug 39″

What poetry,
This accomplishment
Put together pain?
Labor,
Lessons and Dante,
Indian psychology;
What spell,
This sensibility?
The pure progression,
The thin summits,
Their Pisgah personality,
The fire fields,
The sleep forest,
The curious thought,
Life away,
And man.
The centuries have art,
The subjects the same.
“For Christ’s sake get into bed,
We live forever.”
“Petals rose,”
We live,
Values fall from shellfire,
Only survives,
Only achievement.
They the headstones,
In battlefields,
“Poor guy, all about.”
Spectacled years,
Give cultural lags.
A little soup,
A half-hour morning,
Some didn’t;
The hurry
Behind museums.
This ascent,
Camped timberline,
Watched the earth,
Watched the war
Spread civilization.
These years of authority.
The crisis,
Ten years of power,
The laws,
The rule of blood,
The abiding brain.
They are murderous,
If they cork
It shoots,
It’s condemned
“Liberty mother
Not order.”
“Not men,
But things.”
“From ability,
Unto needs.”
We hear them,
Cutting glaciers,
Teetering aretes.
The cold mountains
Has rope
And iceaxes,
There are left
Twenty-five, sweetheart,
Back from waiting for me.
“I read the New Republic.
Do you remember the corner,
How a sheeted figure
Ran, remember?
There is the corner,
A parking lot to be,
Only houses are left.
We monoxide.”
It was exile,
Twenty-five years around
In a poison.
She went back,
But imported
Explosion gases.
Dante was it,
So many others,
Pound among them,
Kropotkin hunger,
Berkman hand,
Fanny executioners,
Mahkno calumny,
Trotsky after his fashion.
Remember?
What is this poetry,
This accomplishment
much pain?
Do you in the basement?
What years?
Writers’ weeklies?

-5/6/04 D Badman

(This one is created from Kenneth Rexroth’s “August 22, 1939″ (find it in his Complete Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2003)), taking the beginnings and endings of the lines. It’s long, but for the most part works well as a distillation of the original piece, but is, again, something new.)

“Urn”

Quietness,
and slow time,
express
rhyme,
shape,
both.
Arcady.
Maidens loth
to escape
ecstasy?

Unheard,
play on
endear’d
tone.
Leave
bare
thou kiss.
Grieve
thy bliss.
Be fair!

Shed
adieu.
Unwearied
new
love!
Enjoy’d
young
above
cloy’d
tongue.

Sacrifice?
Priest,
the skies
drest?
Shore
the citadel.
Morn,
evermore
to tell.
Return!

Brede
overwrought
weed,
thought
Pastoral.
Waste
woe.
Say’st
all
to know.

-5/5/04 D Badman

(Based on Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”.)

I took Kenneth Rexroth’s “Red Maple Leaves” (1974) and applied the haikuisation method to it, taking one or two words from the end of each line. I adjusted a verb or two (for grammatical correctness), adjusted punctuation, and combined some lines for ease of reading (all those one word lines can be annoying to look at).

Leaves (2004)

Brilliant streets

are filled.

Light has fallen.

Sunlight-covered lawns.

Young together,

other years

gone by.

Days,

with the years

since.

Come back home,

again.

Pillared porch,

at the window:

the river,

a bridge,

amongst leaves �

the smoky sunset.

-5/5/04 D Badman after K Rexroth

Tags: Constraint, oulipo, poetry, queneau, rexroth

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