Abbreviations: Comp.=Oulipo Compendium, BO=Bibliothèque oulipienne, Dalkey=Dalkey

Archive press

Illustrations of procedures created specifically for Oulipo Compendium are not included / sont exclus les démonstrations de procédés composées uniquement pour l’Oulipo Compendium

Acrostic (multiple) / acrostiche multiple (Comp. p 45)

See / voir “Anniversary” in Les Amis de Valentin Bru, no. 13-14

Antonymy / antonymie (Comp. p 30): the replacement of a category of compositional elements by their opposites / remplacer une catégorie des éléments d’un texte par leurs contraires

See / voir :

“The Dexters and the Sinisters” in Vingt poètes américains, ed. Michel Deguy et

Jacques Roubaud (NRF, 1980)

“The Planisphere” in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992)

Trial Impressions XXV  in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet,

1992)

Bananagram (Comp. p 55) : an anagram from which, ideally, all possibility of rational meaning has been removed / un anagramme d’où, dans la mesure du possible, toute possibilité d’interprétation rationelle est exclue

See / voir :

“A Granma, a Recluse: N²” in Schreibheft 38, October 1991; To, vol. 1, no. 2, spring 1993

Excerpt / extrait : anagrams of the names Oskar Pastior & Harry Mathews /

anagrammes des noms Oskar Pastior et Harry Mathews

The Invention of Language: a dialogue / L’invention du langage : un dialogue

H ari atsop, Oskr ?

­O Harÿ, hemr tswa !

kosista roapr tyawhasr hemr :

ksyorar har, her mwista atsop.

H rhyas roakr. ohim tswar te aps,

tswar heoskma rihyar atsopr :

kse tswar oham, hir pyorastra.

O oapr kosisatr mryahwat hesr ;

ksiarot opasr rwha rhyetsma.

H ayi pratr hosr ?

O ohem tswar ksa,

psa hyar torir, te ams kwa hosr.

H ima twhorps te sa ? kroyar hasr ?

O hor psa mwitas te aror krhyas.

rhyas korar, psa mwitas ohetr :

“ksyorar har, her mwista atsop.”

psa rihyar to “S”, te ams wrahokr ;

hir ryar to aps, te ams kwo hasr ;

srhe mryahwat, sariost opakr ;

rhyestra mwha, osisatr opakr ;

heoskma srwat iya pratr hosr

asmots kwa her, “psa hyar torir”.

te srhos amwitpa, hakr syorar.

te amisa twhorps, royar srhak.

styahwamr her ositra koaspr :

ari tswar atsop, Harÿ ?

H Oskr, hem !

Beautiful Outlaw / la belle absente (Comp. p 56) : a work in which each line or sentence includes all the letters of the alphabet except for the letter that appears in a given name (or other series of letters) in the position corresponding to that of the line (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, etc) / un texte dont chaque vers (ou phrase) contient toutes les lettres de l’alphabet sauf celle dont la position dans un nom choisi correspond à celle du vers (1ère, 2ème, 3ème, etc)

See /voir :

"For a Mancunian on her thirtieth birthday) in Broadway 2, A Poets and Painters Anthology, ed. James Schuyler and Charles North (New York: Hanging Loose Press, 1989), p. 84, [poem]

Out of Bounds (Burning Deck, Providence, 1989)

Example / exemple

For A Mancunian Before Her Thirtieth Birthday

Sunny England, so full of other surprises  unjaded passions for food and wine, and even the bleakly ambivalent writings of Paris;

And its north so steadfast in refusing to be voided by the withdrawing tide of economic “readjustment”; and unparked Manchester

So meekly robust, with its teetering council houses, its unbusily bustling center, to me the trove of rejoicing for my unhoped-for new friends;

And after the fond jokes, you at the last, met that once only, never forgotten, a completeness of beauty, candor, and warmth:

Now, on its digitally coded pin, a hinge evolves and swings an imagined gate like an effulgent, bellying jib

Away, disjoining what is past, disclosing worlds to start vigilantly back through towards a consummation of what is always, of what was always you.

Branching system / Un conte à votre façon  (Comp. p 116): a text structured so as to allow multiple readings according to the reader’s choice / un texte construit de façon à permettre des lectures multiples selon le choix du lecteur

See / voir :

Trial Impressions XIII  in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992)

Cento /centon (Comp. p 120): a text made out of extracts from other texts / texte composé uniquement d’emprunts à d’autres textes

See / voir :

“Maria Gostrey” in The Planisphere (Burning Deck, 1974) (source: a description

by Henry James of his novel The Ambassadors / source : une description par Henry James de son roman, Les Ambassadeurs)

Chronogramme / chronogramme (Comp. p 124) : a text in which all the letters that correspond to Roman numerals add up to a given year of the Christian era / texte où, en additionnant toutes les lettres qui correspondent à des chiffres romains – c, d, i, l, m, v,

x – , on obtiendra la date d’une année donnée de l’ère chrétienne

See / voir :

Un chronogramme pour 1997 (“An Ex-voto to include excursive excavators: a

Chronogram for 1997”) (BO 92, Paris,), 15 pp.

“An exclusive evolutionary vortex of world excursions: the Chronogram for

1998” in Jacket #3 (4/1998), online / sur le web ; also in Frank: an international journal of contemporary writing & art, number 16-17 (double issue), (1998)

“Clocking the World on Cue: The Chronogram for 2001” in Conjunctions:

Twentieth Anniversary Issue (2001), 252 pp; pp 342-348,

Example /exemple

NOTE: The chronogram – a centuries-old literary form – follows a simple but demanding rule: when all letters corresponding to Roman numerals (c, d, i, l, m, v, and x) are added together, they produce a sum equivalent to a specific year of the Christian calendar. The single words memory and memento are thus chronograms of the year 2000 (m x 2); so are A moment for feasts & prayers (m x 2) and A year to pay homage to the dead (m x 1 + d x 2).  Both the title and text of this work are examples of chronograms of the current year.

January starts: sun here, stars there. So what joys & fears has the New Year brought us?

• In the Irkukst penitentiary ironworks the night shift is finishing its stint, skirting weighty pig-iron ingots as it regains the prison interior.

0 In Pienza, Ernestina is heating tripe fiorentina for thirteen.

• In Sing-Sing, wearing surreptitious attire, spiting the surprising North Irish negotiations & shrinking tensions, Phineas, retiring Bishop of Ossining, with the authorities’ requisite inattention, is tonight anointing fifteen Fenian ("Fighting Irish") priests in a rite of injurious piety.

 Bibi is shirring pigeon eggs in Saint Étienne.

 In Brighton, gregarious Brother Ignatius is getting high quaffing his fifth straight Irish whisky.

 In Pretoria, gritty Erwin Higginson (age eight), ignoring fatigue & injuries, is winning his point in a bruising nineteen-eighteen tiebreaker against Fritz Spitzfinger (age nine) by returning a wristy spinner hip-high & without hesitation whipping it fair, Spitzfinger then batting it high into the  rows to bring the fifteenth prestigious Witherspoon Tennis Initiation Tourney to a breathtaking finish.

 In Fuji, pursuing a hashish high with Quentin, Kenny is perusing sporting prints by Hiroshige & Hokusai.

 Arising at eight in Brisbane, Ian, aspiring historian of propitious intuitions, enjoys the benign aberration that, by getting a grip on his utopian fusion of Augustinian with Einsteinian reasoning, he is attaining a genuine gnosis.

 In Etrurian Tarquinia, Gigi is eating spaghetti with pepperoni.

 In Austria, zipping past the Inn, ignoring warning signs, Pippo Peruzzi, first-string Ferrari whiz, big winner in Spain & Argentina, is steering his touring bike (pistons & turbine whirring, its stunning furnishings genuine Pinin-Farina) in brisk pursuit of fiery Zizi, his Hungarian skier, itinerant antithesis, antagonist, tigress, priestess, siren, obsession, happiness, wife.

 Bobbie is sitting with Bert in a Parisian bistro, in whose noisy interior untiring opportunists are satisfying pretentious ninnies with inferior white wine.

 Heroin originating in Iquitos is winning first prize with tertiary bargaining arbitrators in Tijuana.

 Bonnie is frying onion rings in Triffin, Ohio.   

 In antique Poitiers, Antoinette is refreshing her guests with interpretations of Rossini's quainter offerings, interspersing arias & ariettas with his "Nizza" (singer & piano), his "Raisins" & "Noisettes" (piano), his first sinfonia (strings), & his roguish "Iphigenia" (bass trio).

 In Tirana, inept Hussein is paying fifty-eight qintars to fortify his Istrian wine with Bosnian raki.

 In the wintry outskirts of Pori, Father Tiki Haakinen  enterprising & itinerant Finnish priest  is repairing hi-fi wiring for a parish benefit.

 In spite of its threat to her ingratiating Gibson waist, Rikki, in Zanzibar, is insisting on heaping & eating piggish portions of spaghetti & fig pie.

 Postponing inopportune issues & putting first things first, Kiwanis, Rotarians, & Shriners are putting their agonizing unity in writing, signing a proposition that reasserts their opposition to atheists, bigotry, euthanasia ("outright assassination"), heroin, pinkos, the Spanish Inquisition, superstition, & unfairness in business arbitration.

 Fate, or perhaps the outrage of one hurt spirit, separates father & son for many years of harsh regret.

 In Antibes, binging on pastis is getting Winnie higher than nine kites.

 In Kiruna, in white tie, sipping a Perrier, Fafnir Grieg, high priest of Ibsen initiates, is testing his register & intonation in painstaking preparation for his fiftieth signature interpretation of the protagonist in Ghosts.

 In Gorizia, Anita is working up an appetite for anitra triestina ironing sheets.

 At Trinity, Robin is boating with his tutor, Isaiah Singe. Isaiah is asking if Robin thinks he is going to finish his thesis (Affinities with the Orient: Inquiries into spurious interpretations of Hafiz in Ariosto, Ossian & Kropotkin) within his transitory span of years.

 In Bingen, penurious Winston is spiking his uninspiring Pepsi with Steinhäger.

 Business-wise Erika O'Higgins is sitting in Pittsburgh squinting with attention at the infuriating fine print in an IRS opinion assigning Irish pension benefits she is repatriating. The opinion questions her attestation separating foreign benefits, earnings as insurer in Tangier & those in fringe

proprietary rights in Eritrea; pinpoints gains transpiring through inquiries into unwritten but propitious  negotiations in Haiti; & reinstates profits inherent in eight-figure operations she is authorizing in Bisk (Siberia).

 In Bonaire, Georgia, hungry Josiah is weighing into his piping-hot grits & grunts.

 Rehearsing Rienzi in her Gorki isba, Anastasia thinks of Patti singing in I Puritani, of Kipnis in Boris, of Kiri Te Kanawa’s Rosina in a Göttingen Figaro.

 In Ostia, engaging Ethiopian waiters trigger big tips by squirting nips of grappa into porringers of out-of-season fruit.                                      

 Batting against the Orizaba Tigres in Irapuato, rookie Juanito Arias first whiffs in eight straight opportunities before hitting a ninth-inning zinger & satisfying the inhabitants' hopes of winning the Zapatista Series.

 Zazie is biting into rabbit thighs in Barbizon.

 Zenia, passionate Aquinist, is pursuing an ingenious hypothesis, assigning the origins of Aquinas's interpretations of Gorgias to an "Osirian" genesis arising in the writings of inquiring Egyptian priests, an origin that the Sophists reinstate,  or so Zenia infers in her ingenious synthesis. Questioning the suppositions of post-Aquinist thinkers, Zenia insists on the inferiority of Fourier's "inanities," Wittgenstein's "gibberish," & Austin's "asininities."

 High-intensity spirits inspire high-intensity spirit in noisy Kirin.

 In an uninspiring quarter of Trier, Ohioan Josiah, a boisterous nineteen, is infuriating Swiss Inge, a serious thirty, by persisting in attributing the first apprehension of the Einstein shift to Igor Sikorsky.

 In a ristorante in Torino, sheepish Antonio’s superstitious hesitation between arrabiata spaghetti & risotto with funghi both intrigues & irritates patient Giorgina.

 In Ottawa, thirteen Inuit Situationists are signing treaties with the nation’s highest authorities guaranteeing that their tribes & regions inherit proprietary herring-fishing rights outright & in perpetuity.

 In Whitby, seagoing Einar, finishing his fifteenth pink gin, insists he is quite fine.

 In Twinsburg (Ohio), when a nitwit intern, threatening to irrigate her intestines with his “own unique quinine infusion,” brings out a giant syringe, Queenie, a patient with hepatitis B, her weary inertia shattering at the threat of this aggression, begins reiterating in shrieks of  irritation & anguish, “No penetration without representation!”

 Ski-touring in Bennington, Jiri spits out bits of unripe kiwi in a fit of pique.

 Supine in Biarritz, Tristan  unsparing onanist  is perusing Gautier's pornographies, whose swift prurient inspiration stiffens his waning spirits.

 In Rosario (Argentina), fiery Antonio is assuaging his thirst with sweetish Rhine wine.

 Ianthe, in Berkshire, is initiating with requisite ingenuity her inquiry into "Oppositions & affinities in the autobiographies of Gibbon, Twain, & Frank Harris".  

 In the Ain, Fifi is eating pike patties.

 In their frigate-repair station in Hawaii, engineer’s assistant Rossetti is preparing to assassinate his superior, Ensign Fink, for gratuitous insinuations about his inferior IQ.

 Anisette fizzes are winning the night in Springs, whither Henri is steering Bettina in his antique Hispano-Suiza.

         Rehearsing Griffith’s reinterpretation of the Oresteia, Saint Rita is pursuing Sinatra  a horrifying Aegistheus  then knifing Frank in his upstairs bathing unit. Arguing about the Patripassian & Arian heresies, Ignatius, Athanasius, & Boethius irritate an otherwise patient Hypatia. Portia is propositioning Iago. Tweetie, Isaiah, & Sophie Goering are intoning Britten’s (or is it Griffin’s?) “Fair Oriana.”  With Thisbe furnishing her know-how to position the pair, King Henry the Fifth is trying to insert his uninteresting penis into a twittering Titania. The White Rabbit appraises Pippa passing with irony and pity.

 In Saint-Quentin, Pierre is into his fifth pinkish Pinot Noir.

 Writing finis to his reign in the prize ring in Ashanti, Nigeria, "Tiger" Titus (Niger) is forfeiting a bruising fist fight to his Ibo heir, Tobias, thus ratifying his  apparent superiority.

 In a quaint inn in Rieti, Kiki & Brigitte sniff quasi-appetizing brain fritters hissing in swine fat.

 Fishing in Touraine, Irwin is unkinking Eugenia's rig & fitting it with spinners. Their skiff sits in a quiet bight where feisty, spiky pike are rising & biting. First strike! It is raining.

 Uriah, Iggi, Jennifer, Tabitha are hitting the Pinot Grigio in a wine bar in Waikiki.

 In Fife, Inigo Higgins finishes writing his iniquitous Jottings on Kinship Etiquette in Barrie, Rattigan, Braine & Pinter.

 Gauging his position in the whitening Pakistanian heights, Piotr eats his fiftieth fig out of its tin.

 Its gregarious parties gathering at a transient staging-point, shipping in the Bering Straits, either freight or passenger, is stationary tonight  engines quiet, neither jib nor spinaker astir. As the fortieth ship nears, persistent skiffs begin sprinting through the nippy waters, swapping ostentatious rations & surprising potations & ferrying a rotation of seafaring prostitutes out of Tientsin, Biak, Iquique, Teresina, Kauai, Tenerife, Piraeus, & Hoboken.

 In Whitefriars, Pip infers that he is gaining genuine insights by sharing a firkin of Guinness with Brian.

 In Perugia, unwise Arrigo Panin is preparing a presentation that, straining notions of affinities to their breaking-point, risks irking (or boring) knowing trainees in his Institute for Insight & Orientation by arguing that it is appropriate to attribute Hopkins's inspiration to Whittier, Stein's to Browning.

 Faith is refrigerating nineteen stingers & braising nine satiating portions of bison brisket in Topperish (Washington).   

 Hiking in the interior of Shikoku, Kirk is sustaining a tiring Iris with aspirins & interesting attributions of Finnegan's epiphanies.     

 Sophie & Étienne, in an Iberian setting, are swigging refreshing pints of sangria gratis.

 In Sabine, righteous Sheriff Winthrop Prior, feinting a right, is banging a furious fist into a hirsute rapist's ribs & a punishing thigh into his iniquitous groin.

 Georgianna is nourishing nine aging kittens in Big Sur.

 Benign skies in Arizona. At a prairie spring, Tintin is watering his proprietor's thirty-eight first-string ponies  they're skittish ponies, stirring, neighing, biting, nosing bitten withers. Rising high in his stirrups, reins tight against bit, quirt hanging at his wrist, Tintin spits; sitting, he tips a sparing ration into its Zigzag wrapping. Prairie rabbits thinking: rain. Harriers beating their wings in thin bright air. Tintin thinking: this night's attire  white shirt, string tie  is right for winning his engaging señorita. His pinto whinnies & pisses.

 Sipping saki in Gifu, Roshi is getting quite tipsy.

 Zigzagging in nifty figure eights on a skating rink in frosty Keewatin, Nettie is fantasizing an ingenious haikuisation of Swinburne's "Proserpine."

 In Pistoia, tiny Pierino, stripping a thin bit of appetizing skin off the shining ribs of a spit-roasting pig, bites into it with a grin.   

 Within sight of eternity, Keith Asquith, wintering in Antigua, is taking unsparing pains to surprise, spite, & punish his nowise ingratiating Yorkshire heirs  “The shits!”

 In Iowa abstainers are abstaining.

 In Austin, Ira & Justina, a striking pair, registering at first sight no antipathies but intriguing affinities, wishing to kiss, interiorize their inhibitions, banish their hesitations, skip propositions, & kiss, hip against hip. A swift shifting into a pertinent interior to quit their attire: whipping off pigskin trainers, unbuttoning Ira's shirt, stripping off Justina's T-shirt, unzipping her tight-fitting skirt & his khakis, unhooking her brassiere, ripping away panties & briefs, ignoring trinkets, skin to skin... "Wait," interrupts Justina, insisting, "first this joint," to forthwith initiate brisk intakes & an instantaneous high. Kissing again, Ira's fingertips graze with finesse Justina's hair, ribs, & thighs. Justina seizes his wrists & entwines his waist between jittering tibias. Straining, Ira nips her tits. Thrashing, her nips stiffening, Justina tightens her grip. Gratifying Justina's appetite for kissing with ingenious bites, in his benign yearning Ira using his weight tips her posterior hither, baring Justina's piping fig. Into this engaging shrine Ira insinuates his inspissating thing, an insertion that ingratiates writhing Justina, inquiring in its penetration of her gripping, shifting pith, whose stunning twinges infuse Ira with stinging fire. He begins panting, his sinews stiffen, he hisses, Justina shrieks. It's brief, it's nifty, it's insane. Supine & sweating, Ira & Justina sigh faint sighs, kiss, grin, & sink into unworrying, transitory night.

 In the Tsinking zoo, unhesitating hippos, giraffes, kiwis, penguins, tortoises,  porpoises, & tigers are ingesting big propitiatory portions of grain, onions, fruit,  ginger, fish, & pig.

 On Thirteenth Street & First, Antoine & Honoria are sharing a pizza & a knish.

 Aries & Sirius are shining in Tunisian skies,

& so our New Year has begun.

Combination of procedures / combinaison de contraintes (Comp. p 147)

See / voir :

Une soirée oulipienne (BO 57)

 “Variations” in Variations, variations, Variationen  (BO 91), repr. Comp. p 111)

 “Presto” in N-ines, autrement dit quenines (BO 65) (poem of 6 stanzas of 6 lines of 6 words of 6 letters, all words being anagrammes of the end-words except for the word “Oulipo,” also 6 letters long, which appears only once in each stanza = sestina + anagram + measures) / poème de 6 strophes de 6 vers de 6 mots de 6 lettres, où tous les mots sont des anagrammes des mots-rimes, à part “Oulipo”, également de 6 lettres, qui n’apparaît qu’une fois dans chaque strophe ; donc sextine + anagramme + mesures)

 “L’amélioration” in S +7, le retour, repr. Nouvelle Revue Française no. 472, 992 ; Pierre Lartigue, L’hélice décrire (Belles Lettres, 1994)  (sestina + N+7 / sextine + S+7)

    “Husserl’s Curse” in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992) (sestina + beautiful in-law; / sextine + beau présent)  

See also / voir aussi at n-ina “Viaggio verso una terra sconosciuta”

Example / exemple

35 Variations on a theme from Shakespeare   

00 Source text:

To be or not to be, that is the question

01 Alphabetically

A BB EEEE HH II NN OOOOO Q R SS TTTTTTT U

02 Anagram

Note at his behest: bet on toot or quit                                    

03 Lipogram in c, d, f, g, j, k, l, m, p, v, w, x, y, z:

To be or not to be, that is the question

04    Lipogram in a

To be or not to be, this is the question

05 Lipogram in i

To be or not to be, that's the problem

06 Lipogram in e

Almost nothing, or nothing: but which?

07 Transposition (W + 7)

To beckon or not to beckon, that is the quinsy

08 Strict palindrome

No, it's (eu) qeht sit. Ah! te botton roebot

09 Missing letter

To be or not to be hat is the question

10 Two missing letters

To be or not to be at is the question

11 One letter added

To bed or not to be, that is the question

12 Negation

To be or not to be, that is not the question

13 Emphasis

To be, if you see what I mean, to be, be alive, exist, not just keep hanging around; or (and that means one or the other, no getting away from it) not to be, not be alive, not exist, to ‑ putting it bluntly ‑ check out, cash in your chips, head west: that (do you read me? not "maybe this" or "maybe something else") that is, really is, irrevocably is, the one and only inescapable, overwhelming, and totally preoccupying ultimate question

14 Curtailing

Not to be, that is the question

15 Curtailing (different)

To be or not to be, that is

16 Double curtailing

Not to be, that is

17 Triple contradiction

You call this life? And everything's happening all the time? Who's asking?

18 Another point of view

Hamlet, quit stalling!

19 Minimal variations

To see or not to see

To flee or not to flee

To pee or not to pee

20 Antonymy

Nothing and something: this was an answer

21 Amplification

To live forever or never to have been born is a concern that has perplexed humanity from time immemorial and still does

22 Reductive

One or the other ‑ who knows?

23 Permutation

That is the question: to be or not to be

24 Interference

a) Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow:

That is the question

b)   To be or not to be

      Creeps through this petty pace from day to day

      And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

      The way to dusty death

25 Isomorphisms

Speaking while singing: this defines recitativo

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers

26 Synonymous

Choosing between life and death confuses me

27 Subtle insight

Shakespeare knew the answer

28 Another interference

Put out the light, and then? That is the question

29 Homoconsonantism

At a bier, a nutty boy, too, heats the queasy tone

30 Homovocalism

Lode of gold ore affirms evening's crown

31 Homophony

Two-beer naughty beat shatters equation

32 Snowball with an irregularity

I

am

all

mute

after

seeing

Hamlet's

annoying

emergency

yourstruly

Shakespeare

33 Heterosyntaxism

I ask myself, is it worth it, or isn't it?

34 In another meter

So should I be, or should I not?

This question keeps me on the trot

35 Interrogative mode

Do I really care whether I exist or not?

(We leave the reader saddled with this painful question.)

Definitional literature / littérature définitionelle (Comp.. p 133): each meaningful word in a text is replaced by its dictionary definition / chaque mot principal d’un texte est remplacé par sa définition dans un dictionnaire

See / voir :

Trial Impressions V  in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992)

Deunglitsch (Comp. p 136) : a vocabulary of words that are spelled identically in the German and English and at the same time have no shared meaning / un lexique de mots dont l’orthographe en anglais et en allemand est identique mais qui n’ont aucune signification commune

See / voir :

“We, I, He,” If, No. 9 (Marseille, 1996); Jacques Jouet, Échelles et papillons : le pantoum (Paris: Les Belles lettres, 1998)

Example / exemple

German vocabulary / vocabulaire allemand :

warten, musterten, linkten, nagten, ragten, eggten, spurten, pufften, sparten, maulten, lockten, stickten, sagten, sitten, dankten, wetten, blueten, maleten

War

Ten muster, ten link,

ten nag, ten rag,

ten egg, ten spur,

ten puff, ten spar,

ten maul, ten lock,

ten stick, ten sag,

ten sit

ten dank, ten wet,

ten blue: ten, male ten.

Eclipse  (Comp. p 139): a work that includes both an N + 7 (q v) and the text from which it is derived / œuvre qui incorpore un S + 7 (q v) aussi bien que le texte original

See / voir :

“Le semeur de sens” in Écrits français (BO 51)

Eoderndrome : see Comp. pp 141-142 for definition and examples using letters, words, and place names / voir Compend. pages 141-142 pour une définition et des exemples utilisant des lettres, des mots et des noms de lieu

Equivoque / poème pour ruban de Möbius (Comp. pp 143, 193): a text that allows more than one reading / texte permettant une lecture alternative et le plus souvent antonymique

See / voir :

Trial Impressions XV in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992)

Eye-rhyme / rime pour l’œil (Comp. p 147)

See / voir :  

A l’œil (BO 70)

Example / exemple : a limerick in eye-rhymes / un limerick en rimes pour l’œil

Young Dick, always eager to eat,

Denied stealing the fish eggs, whereat

  Caning him for a liar,

  His pa ate the caviar

And left Dickie digesting the caveat.

Homomorphism (homosyntaxism) (Comp. p 153): a work in which the form and syntax of a pre-existing text are maintained and its vocabulary replaced by that of another text / œuvre où la forme et la syntaxe d’un texte donné sont préservés tandis qu son vocabulaire est remplacé par celui d’un autre texte

See / voir :

Trial Impressions VII (original: sonnet by Sir Philip Sydney) in A Mid-Season

Sky: Poems 1954-1991  

Trial Impressions XXIX  (original: poem by James Schuyler) in A Mid-Season

Sky: Poems 1954-1991  

 ––  PPPP (the Mathews Perfectible Parody and Pastiche Procedure)/ (procédé perfectible de pastiche et de parodie) (Compend. p 209): a combination of homosyntaxism (q v) and “homolexicalism” – the syntax of one passage of a chosen author is rewritten using the vocabulary of another passage by the same author / la syntaxe d’un extrait d’un auteur donné est récrit en utilisant le lexique d’un autre extrait du même auteur

See / voir :

“The Calling” (a “poem by Emily Brontë”) in New Observations # 99: Oulipo – Oupeinpo, Jan-Feb 94 (New York)

Example / exemple

The Calling

for Emily Bronte

Burning with prayer and the undimmed sky around her,

Ascending now, now dark in the equal rays,

Could she endure his pictured breath that bound her,

Proven once again in morning's proving face?

Far if resplendent do his eyes still turning

Back to the anguish of that desert moor

Dazzle her night with lids and lips fast burning

The dreary days that still, that still endure.

Burning with prayer, and one bitter forgetting

Of that wild land ascended in farewell –

Vacant again the lost day in its setting

Beneath no couch of blood her tongue can tell.

Black wind of grief maddening the air to freeze her

When her heart's breath had overflowed in light:

The north wind kills the heavenly glance that sees her,

A soul fallen back and hidden in the night.

Each tempest that had streamed across her glory,

Each gloomy pang that ever had tortured them,

All her doom's task rose in his stern thought's story,

All her past woes turned words for blessing him.

And if that fate with deadly scorn overflowing,

And more than scorn, were careless in its doom,

Could she then smile at pain that in her knowing

Lighted and watched her through cold glens towards home?

Could she now close her vain tears' cheerless streaming,

Call her decline a passion risen from pride,

Strongly ruled by his full sun and its beaming

Into the wanderer's halls where she might hide?

And still she lingered where old deaths had borne her,

Blown by bleak sighs that made her love grow cool,

Frantic to dim the tyrant that had torn her

From clouded life to his long, shining rule.

(Sources: for the syntax / pour la syntaxe, Emily Brontë, "Cold in the earth..."; for the vocabulary / pour le vocabulaire, the remaining Gondal poems / les autres poèmes au sujet du royaume de Gondal)

Homophony / homophonie (Comp. p 154) : deriving a fictitious incident from the

homophonic reading of a given word or phrase / inventer une fiction à partir d’une lecture homophonique d’un mot ou d’une suite de mots

See / voir :

La Cantatrice sauve (BO 16)

See also /voir aussi Sequence

Legal franglais / l’égal franglais (Comp. 148): a vocabulary consisting of words spelled identically in English and French while having no meaning in common / un lexique comportant des mots dont l’orthographe est identique an anglais et en français mais qui n’ont aucune signification en commun

See / voir :

“L’égal franglais” in Martin Gardner, Mathematical Games  

See also / voir aussi at n-ina “Viaggio verso una terra sconosciuta”.

Examples/ exemples

Roman delusive gent fit crisper rayon (Roman d'élusive gent fit crisper rayon)

Mets attend the sale (Mets attend thé salé)

If rogue ignore genes, bride pays (If rogue ignore gênes, bride pays)

If emu ignore bonds, mire jars rogue (If ému ignore bonds, mire jars rogue)

As mute tint regains miens, touts allege bath (As muté tint regains miens, tout s'allège, bath)

Lescurean word square / carré lescuréen (Comp. p 169): the 24 possible arrangements of 4 given words / les 24 permutations de 4 mots donnés

See / voir :

“A Partial Survey of Western European Holiday Migrations” in Selected Declarations of Dependence (repr. Sun & Moon, 1996)

“Trois carrés lescuréens” in Le Savoir des rois (BO 5)

Example / exemple

Words chosen / mots choisis : prose, bones, soap, poem

The prose of bones makes soap of a poem

Prose of bones makes a poem of the soap

Prose of soap makes the bones of a poem

Prose of soap makes a poem of bones

The prose of a poem makes bones of soap

The prose of a poem makes soap of bones

Bones of prose make the soap of a poem

Bones of prose make a poem of the soap

The bones of the soap make prose of the poem

The bones of the soap make a poem of prose

The bones of the poem make prose of the soap

The bones of the poem make soap of the prose

Soap of the prose makes a poem of bones

Soap of the prose makes bones of the poem

The soap of the poem makes prose of the bones

The soap of the poem makes the bones of prose

The soap of bones makes prose of the poem

The soap of bones makes a poem of prose

A poem of prose makes soap of bones

A poem of prose makes bones of soap

A poem of soap makes prose of bones

A poem of soap makes bones of prose

A poem of bones makes prose of soap

A poem of bones makes soap of prose

Lipogram / lipogramme (Comp. p 174) : writing a text that omits one or letters of the alphabet / écrire un texte qui exclut une ou plusieurs lettres de l’alphabet

See /voir : “Back to Basics” in A Georges Perec (BO 83); repr. Comp. p 76

Example / exemple

The restriction used by Georges Perec in La Disparition – the exclusion of the letter e – is followed in this tribute to him  / la contrainte utilisé par Georges Perec dans La Disparition – un lipogramme en e – est suivi dans cet hommage à son intention :

Back to Basics

In a pinch you can always say GP, but you will find no way of naming him fully in a situation such as this. Still, calling to mind many various ways in which words found distinction at his hands, I think it is not unfitting to discuss him in this particular fashion, which is, in truth, a product of loss; and you and I know that loss is what now is most vivid about him, so that honoring him in a form issuing wholly from loss looks, to my instinct, right. And with this odd constraint braking what I might call our train of imagination, you and I can start on our trip; a trip into a domain ‑ part thinking back, part anticipation, part hallucination (but strong in actuality for all that) ‑ in which all is form, and form is drawn from abstraction, or spirit. Our trip may start by taking us through hills of sorrow, so harsh that as you climb your sight will almost vanish from pain of crying; it may thrust us into swamps of disgust, of hating our condition as unfair; it may push us across dry plains of frustration, on which angry shadows distract our will with shouts of anguish, adjuring us to abandon our hoping (and who can avoid hoping?) as it has no goal. But at last you will approach ‑ almost straying into it, as if stumbling backwards into lost, familiar surroundings ‑ you will approach and pass into that first vast wood into which I was born with you, with its bluish light, its floor of moss, its soothing air, its roof of tangling boughs. You will sit down in that sanctuary and find your consolation. You will now know that our world is not forlorn, that all is around you to fashion again into what you want and always did want, out of that abundant fountain that is our origin ‑ that flowing, that light, that flux of light that wrought us into living things. You will not find him; but you will find what it is that struck him out of night, and you with him. You will know this world as a world that is full, as a world from which nothing is cast out, including that which is lost for always; and lastly you will find jubilation abounding, in colossal calm.

List / liste

See / voir :

 “Memorial: A Record of Solid and Liquid Foods Absorbed in the Course of the Year 1991” Petits Propos Culinaires 67 (2001: Prospect Books, Totnes (Devon))

Miscellaneous / divers : poem written in accordance with E. A. Poe’s rules for the composition of “The Raven” / poème écrit selon les règles utilisées par E. A. Poe pour composer “Le Corbeau”

See / voir :

“The Sad Birds” in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992)

N-ina / N-ine (Comp. p 198) : the forms derived from the model of the sestina / formes dérivées du modèle de la sextine

See /voir :

Trial Impressions XXX in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992) (sestina using end-words from a poem by Petrarch / sextine utilisant les mots-rimes d’un poème de Pétrarque)

“Histoire” in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992) (sestina with end words ending in –ism / sextine dont les mots-rime terminent en –isme)

See also / voir aussi “Presto,” “L’amélioration “, and “Husserl’s Curse” at Combination of procedures

“Safety in Numbers” in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992) (septina using numbers 1-7 as end words / septine dont les mots-rime sont les chiffres 1-7)

Sainte Catherine (Éditions P.O.L, 2000) (prose novella in quartinas / nouvelles en quatrines)

“Mr. Smathers,” “Brendan,” “The Broadcast” in The Human Country: New and Collected Stories  (Dalkey, 2002) (narrative prose sestinas / sextines narratives en prose)

Examples/ exemples

Le voyage vers Capri  [meeting / réunion 16.VI.00]

[Commande de Rafello (Lello) Aragona de l’Ouplepo d’un texte rattaché au nom de Capri.]

J’ai pensé que le travail que j’ai fait pour Lello méritait un bref compte-rendu ici.

Son principe de départ, qui n’est pas nouveau, est celui qui a inspiré Sainte Catherine : on compose une n-ine (en l’occurrence une quinine) pour aboutir à un récit en prose.

Les particularités de ce travail concernent d’abord les mots-rimes :

               – ils changent d’une strophe à l’autre, mais ils se terminent tous par la même suite de lettres : c, a, p, r et i, qui suivent, elles, la permutation propre à la quinine ( 1 2 3 4 5,  5 1 4 2 3 et ainsi de suite) ;

               – ils sont tous en franglais : en franglais pur quand c’est possible (voir plus loin ; exemples : fouler, pester, gondola jusqu’à roc), autrement en franglais impur (exemples : anar chic, opéra, lava  jusqu’à aurai / aura I). A l’exception d’un seul clinamen, chaque mot-rime anglais a un sens autre que celui du mot-rime français.

Ensuite, une fois composée la quinine française (et donc le récit), elle est traduite en une quinine anglaise avec des mots-rimes orthographiquement identiques et sémantiquement distincts, et qui racconte aussi la même histoire que le récit français.

Cette dernière contrainte fournit le travail le plus amusant, en tout cas pour l’auteur ; mais la contrainte la plus exigeante est la rédaction des mots-rimes bilingues, au moins dans ce cas-ci, où il faut trouver des mots franglais se terminant en c, i et p.

Je conseille à qui voudrait expérimenter cette contrainte de commencer par la version en langue étrangère. L’adaptation d’un texte doublement contraint est certainement plus aisée dans sa langue d’origine.

N + 7 / S + 7 (Comp. p 198): a text in which every noun (N) is replaced by the seventh noun following it in a chosen dictionary / un texte où on remplace chaque substantif (S) par le septième qui le suit dans un dictionnaire préalablement choisi

See / voir :

Trial Impressions XII  in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  (Carcanet, 1992)

(using two dictionaries /en utilisant deux dictionnaires)

Palindrome (Comp. p 204): a text that can be read both backwards and forwards / texte qu’on peut lire dans les deux sens

See / voir :

Trial Impressions XXIV  in A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991  

(Carcanet, 1992)

Permutation of compositional elements (after the Lescurean word square) / permutations de figures (d’après le carré lescurien) (Comp. p 169)

See /voir :

“Tear Sheet,” “The Chariot,” “Letters from Erevan” in The Human Country (Dalkey 2003) ; “Le juste retour”, “L’émigré”, “Cours, Mirabeau !”, in Ecrits français (BO 51)

Perverb / perverbe (Comp. p 206) : combination of the 1^st half of one proverb with the second half of another / réunir la 1ère moitié d’un proverbe avec la deuxième moitié d’un autre

Examples:

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight” + “It never rains but it pours”

> “Red sky at night, but it pours”  

“Araignée du matin, chagrin” + “Jeux de mains, jeux de vilains”

> “Araignée du matin, jeux de vilains”

 – Perverbial poem / poème à perverbe :  Poems, in which every line is a perverb, can be constructed by repeating the 1^st or 2^nd segments of the lines at identical points in each stanza, where they function like rhymes, whether at the beginning or ends of lines. / On contruit des poèmes dont tous les vers sont des perverbes, en reprenant au même point dans chaque strophe la 1er ou la 2ème moitié des vers, qui feront fonctions de rimes, soit au début soit à la fin des vers.

See / voir :

Selected Declarations of Dependence (Sun & Moon, 1996)

Le Savoir des rois (BO 5), Écrits français (BO 51)

Example / exemple

Shore Leave   

All roads lead to good intentions;

East is east and west is west and God disposes;

Time and tide in a storm.

All roads, sailor's delight.

(Many are called, sailors take warning:

All roads wait for no man.)

All roads are soon parted.

East is east and west is west: twice shy.

Time and tide bury their dead.

A rolling stone, sailor's delight.

"Any port" — sailors take warning:

All roads are another man's poison.

All roads take the hindmost,

East is east and west is west and few are chosen,

Time and tide are soon parted,

The devil takes sailor's delight.

Once burned, sailors take warning:

All roads bury their dead.

 – By providing it with a narrative interpretation, a perverb can become a source of fiction. / Doté d’une interprétation narrative, le perverbe peut engendrer de la fiction.

See / voir : Selected Declarations of Dependence (v. supra)

Example / exemple

His amiability in lending the justices the presidential yacht nearly led to disaster: with the entire Supreme Court on board for its annual picnic, the ship was caught in a violent summer storm and run against a sandbar. There, already foundering, it risked being broken up by the surf and wind. By good luck, in that very hour ebb changed to flood, and before further harm was done, the rising ocean lifted the boat and its august cargo into the milder waters of Chesapeake Bay.

                                    Time and tide save nine

Princesse aztèque, la : a 14-line sonnet becomes a poem of 15 lines without a single syllable having been added  / un sonnet de 14 vers devient un poème de 15 vers sans l’ajout d’une seule syllabe

See /  voir :

Comp.  p 74

Example /exemple

Thanskgiving Day I

   While the ultimate daily conversation hums,

   Eight brooding cormorants dream fat diets of eel,

   And winter advances down the shopping mall.

   Buy woolens brighter as the short days pall

   To smother the cold inner eruptive zeal.

   The scattering of breakfast cereal crumbs

   Marks in its traceries vivid as cochineal

   Our whinings (oil regimes, the worsening cost)

   Conjuring the spell of one star-motioned wheel

   Lest any Eumenides sharpen their thumbs,

   Scratch on our windows prophecies, bitter in fall,

   In cursive white spasms of incursive frost.

   No prayer to mollify the time soon lost,

   To still the fire of wounds the end cannot heal.

Thanksgiving Day II

   While the Eumenides sharpen their thumbs,

   Eight brooding cormorants dream fat, in fall

   And winter spasms of incursive frost.

   Buy woollens to mollify the time soon lost,

   To smother the cold wounds the end cannot heal.

   The scattering of breakfast cereal

   Marks in its traceries the worsening cost,

   Our whinings (oil regimes, diets of eel),

   Conjuring the spell of inner eruptive zeal

   Lest any, brighter as the short days pall,

   Scratch on our windows prophecies, bitter crumbs

   In cursive white vivid as cochineal.

   Ultimate daily conversation hums;

   No prayer advances down the shopping mall

   To still the fire of one star-motioned wheel.

Restricted vocabulary / lexique restreint (Comp. p 241): a text written with a deliberately limited vocabulary / un texte comprenant un vocabulaire volontairement réduit

See / voir :

“Their Words, for You” in Selected Declarations of Dependence (Sun & Moon, 1996)

Sequence / série (Comp. p 223): a text based on such pre-existing sequences as the letters of the alphabet, the months of the year, the notes of the musical scale, and so forth / un texte fondé sur des séries telles que l’alphabet, le calendrier, la gamme musicale, etc.

See / voir :

“Crow to scarecrow” in Martin Gardner, Mathematical Games (also Atlas de littérature potentielle, p 265) (homophonic translation of alphabet / traduction homophonique de l’alphabet)

“Plaque” in Atlas Anthology 2 (London, 1984) (alphabet as sequence of initial letters / l’alphabet fournit la série de lettres initiales)

Example / exemple

            Crow to Scarecrow    

Hay, be seedy! Hate-shy, jaky yellow man, O peek, you are rusty, you've edible, you ex-wise he!

Snowball /boule de neige (Comp. p 55)

See / voir :

“O/to/see/man’s/stern/poetic/thought,” printed as “Liminal Poem” in Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature, ed. Warren F. Motte (University Of Nebraska, 1986) / publié comme poème liminaire in Atlas de littérature potentielle, Gallimard, 1981.

“Il 3 luglio 1991” in Dicianovenovantuno (numero unico, Siena, 1991) (in Italian)

“6.5.1991” in Attenzione al Potenziale !”, ed. Brunella Eruli (Marco Nardi, Florence, 1994) (in Italian)

Threesome /ménage à trois

See / voir The Human Country: New and Collected Stories (Dalkey, 2002)  

Cette méthode est copiée sur celle de l’Oupeinpo appelée picturogénèse bitangentielle. Elle pourrait donc s’appeler grammatogénèse bitangentielle, surtout que j’y ai conservé la notion de la tangente littéraire proposée par FLL (deux poèmes sont tangents lorsqu’un même mot apparaît dans leur bord mitoyen) ; mais le terme me semble lourd, et je préférerais un nom plus ordinaire, tel que “ménage à trois”.

Le principe de la méthode est simple : étant donné deux oeuvres d’auteurs différents et de longueur (à peu près) identique, on ménage entre elles un espace de longueur semblable que l’on remplit de façon non seulement à réunir les deux textes mais à les réunir en une oeuvre nouvelle et conséquente.

Je vous soumets deux exemples de la méthode, l’un en prose, l’autre en vers.

(Pour la prose il existe un problème certain, surtout en anglais, qui est de trouver des textes assez courts pour être lus dans un délai supportable. Un tableau très complexe peut être appréhendée dans un instant ; ce n’est pas le cas pour un roman ou même une nouvelle.)