What Is Missing--The Lipogram

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A lipogram is a kind of rule-based writing in which the author does not use a particular letter. Most of the world's poetry is written using constraints--such as particular rhythms, rhyme schemes, etc.--and this is simply one of the poetic tools you can use. 

 Whenever I have taught writing, I have always given an assignment in which the students were to write a one-page essay without using any words that contain the letter E. This assignment was always met with disbelief that it could even be done. I assured them that it could.

Why would I assign my students to do a lipogram? 

One of the benefits of such an exercise is that it forces you to slow down and think about each and every word you're using. Many writing problems are simply a result of being fast and sloppy. We are used to our language, and too often we think because we have spoken it almost all our lives, that we are masters of it. In a sense, we are, but if that were transferable, we wouldn't have so many people writing so many ungrammatical sentences--sentences they would never speak, as they simply could not speak them, they are so unnatural. 

That may seem an odd situation, but that is perhaps a topic for another post. I'll simply say that while acquiring speech is automatic and natural, writing is a technology that must be actively taught. 

Trying to write an essay without using words containing the letter E is a fun exercise. But imagine trying to write a short story without them. Or try a novel. Impossible? Tell that to Ernest Vincent Wright, author of Gadsby*, and to George Perec, author of A Void (Versa Mundi)*. Me, I simply tried to do it with a poem:

I am a lion, a high-soaring bird,
I'm coiling and hissing a softly hot word.
I am a spirit with amorous wings,
A mouth that can only spill words if it sings.
I am light, not shadow or gravity –
I am a painful and dark black cavity.
Do you know what all I say? I’m smiling
And as I laugh, do you know who I’m styling
My soul against? An abyssal dragon
Has flown into dark clouds and sky – an agon,
War whipping my soul into strong and hard
Long-living spirit that will always stand guard
And bring a gift for all of mankind. Gift?
It’s in a box, a box brought up from a rift,
A box I carry down and carry up –
I cannot touch lunch or drink from a cool cup
Until my body and my blood turn warm
And I unfold again my old human form.
A monstrous animal or living light –
A spirit that in its good growth fashions flight
From fast-growing wings that lift us aloft –
Shall all of us grow hard, or stupid, soft?
I had to go down to climb mountaintops,
This light gift . . . I laugh, so that no laughing stops.

You may be wondering how my students did. Many wrote some pretty terrible pieces (I only graded their ability to not use words with the letter E, to be fair in regards to the assignment), but a few wrote some very beautiful mini-essays. And everyone's writing improved dramatically on their next assignment.

Now, go out and write your own lipogram! It will be fun!