Building from Words

 My friend, Brandon, and I play Wordle and Quordle together and share the results via text. Quordle is basically a Wordle where all your guesses go into four grids, and you have nine chances to get all four words. 

One day, after we shared our results, I jokingly told him, "Now, make a story with the four Quordle words." The words that day were: woken, brown, field, and ovary. This is what he responded with:

"Woken in a brown field of wheat, springs new life from mother earth's ovaries."

Let me first note that Brandon isn't a poet. Do note, though, that his response is without question an example of poetry. The restriction of using the four words in a sentence (I had said story, but he restricted himself further to a sentence) resulted in his creating both strong imagery and a very strong metaphor. By using these constraints, Brandon was able to create a very poetic sentence. This is the power of limits.

When I was working on my Master's in English, I was talking with someone about writing poetry, and I bragged that if she gave me five nouns and a verb, I could turn it into a poem. The words that day were: heart, rose, bird, door, apple, and open. This is what I wrote:

Open

My heart opens --
A book, a rose,
The beak of a baby bird
In an old, bent apple tree --
Until I know, now
Its warmth is not wasted
On your door, cracked open.

This was when I was still writing free verse poetry. Now, I would add the additional restrictions of iambic pentameter and rhyme. 

I have also found that making a point of using certain words helped me to write better stories. I consider my short story, "Regret," to be my first successful short story. It came about because of an assignment in a short story writing class. We were supposed to build a story around lists (something I already tended to do, and still tend to do), but a took that assignment in a different direction than the rest of the class. What I did was make a list of words that I semi-randomly found by flipping open both a regular dictionary and a dictionary of biological terms. I then took the words and used each one at the beginning of each paragraph--not as the first word, but as a word that would then be defined by that paragraph. Out of it came a coherent story. You can read it here. 

In each of these cases, the restriction to have to use certain words pushed us to find a poetic way of fitting the words together. 

There is also a form where the strict use of words is a necessary part of the form. In the sestina, you have six stanzas of six lines each, ending with a triplet (called an envoy). You have to use the same six end words in each of six stanzas, while in the envoy, one word has to be buried in the line while the second word has to end the line. Further, the words have to be in a specific order:

ABCDEF

FAEBDC

CFDABE

ECBFAD

DEACFB

BDFECA

Envoy:

(Line 37): BE

(Line 38): DC

(Line 39): FA

As you can see, the result is a 39-line poem.  

Here's my example of a sestina:

My Spring

The winter ends with the emergent crocus
That violates the snow. Bright daffodils
Add sun to melting sun. The fiery tulip
Cups sun and dew before the watery iris
Brings violet once again. The blood-tipped dogwood
Flowers spread white beside the rosy redbud.

Is this a tiny pea upon the redbud
Tree, smaller than the tiny grounded crocus?
The flat and woody flowers of the dogwood
Approach in size the nodding daffodils,
While all the twisted petals of the iris
Bring beauty different from the simple tulip.

In streaks of color, there's no simple tulips --
In small complexity, match the rich redbud
While solid color, simple lines on iris
Flowers balance complexity, and crocus
Delight us with their sign. Fields of daffodils
Spread dancing delight beneath the dogwood.

The forests turn white in the spring with dogwood
When snows are gone. I fill a crystal tulip
Vase, bring the spring in yellow daffodils
Into my home. Outside our window redbud
Trees purple yards. There's but a final crocus
Left in our yard, transferring roles to iris.

The ground shoots forth the green blades of the iris,
A contrast with the trunk and limbs the dogwood
Displays. And lost within the grass the crocus
Hides thin leaves. Waxy, wavy, thick, the tulip
Leaves look so artificial. The dark redbud
Twigs hide in hearts. Strap leaves grow daffodils.

You are the dance and sun of daffodils,
As complex and as bold as are the iris,
The red and heart of fractal-branching redbud,
As solemn and as layered as the dogwood,
Delightful and inspiring as tulip
Flowers, you break my snows like the first crocus.

The daffodils all fade beneath the dogwood
Cross -- then the redbud beans. Aspiring tulip
Beds fail. The iris seize spring from the crocus.

As you can well imagine, constructing such a poem isn't easy. The sestina--especially with the added restriction of iambic pentameter--may come close to pushing the upper limits of constraints being generative of something interesting. There is always a delicate balance when it comes to using constraints to create greater freedom in your writing. 

Ensuring that you use certain words in a poem can be a fun way to write. And I think you'll often be surprised at the things you'll come up with. Rules often make us cleverer--and sometimes more of a poet--than we actually are.