(Do AIs Dream of Electric Deeps?)

We, the last generation of Persons 1.0 are old enough to remember a time when public pay phones still existed and the only screen in our lives was the hefty tube television in the family room that could pick up only four channels and stopped broadcasting every night. But we are also young enough to now be fully entrenched in the network of smartphones and satellites, URLs and drone technology. 

For us, this paradigm shift seemed to occur virtually overnight. We are, as Erykah Badu sang it, an “analog girl in a digital world,” born during a startling volta in the epic poem that is human history. This poetic turn, the birth of the technocracy (which Neil Postman categorizes as the age when technology ceased being merely a tool for human survival and became instead the religious object of worship by humans), induced a kind of vertigo in many of us. 

My own reaction to this feeling was one of rebellion and resistance. I have fluctuated between hostile rejection of the technopoly (by waiting until 2021 to purchase a cell phone) and taking up a hacker’s commitment to adopting the technology for liberatory purposes in my classroom and my art. Writing Hivestruck helped me to better understand these ambivalent feelings about the technopoly, and the dizzying effect it was having on me.

The work of the book led me to understand that I was reacting in part to the extreme velocity with which things have been changing, to Acceleration. Our origins as humans go back approximately 6 million years, but we have only existed in our current form, homo sapiens, for about 300,000 years. 

Writers such as Arthur C. Clarke have theorized that our creation of technology was central to our having survived this long, but for the vast amount of that time our major technological advances were common tools like the spear, shovel, and wheel. The first telephone only happened 150 years ago, the first radio broadcast in 1901, the first commercial flight in 1914. Sputnik 1, the first satellite, launched in 1957, the year my mother was born. Since the Industrial Age, less than 300 years ago, the development of technology has sped up exponentially, and our pace of life has accelerated proportionally to that progress. When things speed up, momentum builds, as does friction. The friction compresses things, melds them. 

As Octavio Paz put it, “such acceleration produces fusion.” Fusion blooms both progress and confusion. Hivestruck is an attempt to make material, through language, this synthesis of progress and confusion.

When it became evident that acceleration would be one of the book’s overarching themes, I determined that the poems in the book should invoke the sensations of quickening and fusion, of innovation wrestling with bewilderment. I needed a poetic form that would not just “say” these things, but also exude them. I found no existing form that would be able to do this work, so I ended up having to create one, a form I call the Moore’s Law Poem. It was a long slow process to come to this form, a process that compelled me to understand the book’s form and function.

In her poetics essay, “You Are Not Safe in Science; You Are Not Safe in History,” Natasha Tretheway examines the meaning and impact of abiding metaphors and how they shape our lives and work. Abiding metaphors can be understood two ways. They are at once symbols and images that recur and manifest continuously with variations throughout our lives that shape our psyches and help us to make meaning. But abiding metaphors can also be symbols and images that litter the culture we are born into, with the intention of limiting our imaginary. 

For Tretheway, a mixed-race poet whose parents birthed her in a time and place when mixing was still very much prohibited, these metaphors came in the form of confederate iconography that was—and is—prominent in the South. These were the metaphors built to contain her in a limiting imaginary. The abiding metaphors she used to make her own meaning, though, came from her more personal family history: an image she recalls from when she nearly drowned as a child, and a photograph her father took of her where she is sitting on a mule.

For a city bred third-gen Nuyorican like me, the abiding metaphors that have shaped me are quite different. Throughout my first two books, which are about my Puerto Rican identity and Caribbean/Latinx history, the island became an abiding metaphor from which I crafted my art (and my psychology). However, working on Hivestruck, a new abiding metaphor arose: the microchip. 

Check out Vincent Toro’s Hivestruck here:

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Made from the second most common element on the Earth’s crust, silicon, and looking like a pixelated spider, its limbs branch out and link to form a sinuous network, an invisible web. The microchip has served as much more than just the dendrites in the brain of all electronic devices that propel modern life on large swaths of the planet. It is also a mutating and multivalent symbol of that life. Whereas Tretheway’s youth was awash in images of confederate flags and civil war statues, mine was inundated with commercials for the Commodore 64, the pixelated Pac Man icon, NASA rocket launches, and mountains of compact discs with the AOL logo.

This abiding metaphor for the book also became an invented poetic form after I learned about Moore’s Law during my research. In 1965, engineer Gordon Moore theorized that the number of chips that could fit into an integrated circuit would double in size every year (after 10 years, he adjusted this prediction to doubling every two years), thus computer processors would get smaller and faster at an exponential rate. This theory came to be known as Moore’s Law, and though it is not in fact a scientific “law,” there is a kind of truth to this prediction. The most powerful computers of the 1970s could fit into a large room. A modern smartphone—faster and more powerful than those computers of 50 years ago—can fit into your hand.

(100+ Poetic Forms for Poets.)

Moore’s Law symbolized for me the acceleration that I was trying to fathom in the book, so I began to play with the foundational elements of Moore’s law and convert them into poetic qualities that might capture the sensations of shrinkage and acceleration. The central constraint of the Moore’s Law form was devised so that the poem would get twice as small with each subsequent stanza, either by line, word, or syllable length at a consistent rate of every one or two stanzas. 

For my Cybermujeres poems, I used word count as the basic unit of constraint, with every stanza being half as many words as the stanza before it, until the final stanza consists of a single word. The Moore’s Law micro-epic Milagros Dreams of Cybersyn uses this compression method as well, but with line length as the basic unit, so that each subsequent stanza has half as many lines as the preceding stanza, culminating in a final stanza of a single line.

A few other less tangible characteristics of the Moore’s Law Poem arose while composing them. The first is thematic. As the haiku is known not only for its rigid syllabic structure, but also commonly refers to nature or uses nature as a thematic element, the Moore’s Law poem conversely (and perhaps obviously) might reference technology, computers, robots, or outer space. Secondly, while a haibun concludes with a haiku that functions as a kind of revelatory moment or condensed reiteration of its prose section, the Moore’s Law poem’s final stanza/line/word serves as a lyrical crescendo that captures the essence of the poem in microcosm. 

In keeping with my own Latinx/Brown poetics, I also drew from the architectural principles of the Latin American décima, which establishes an 8-syllable line format, but also permits the composer to write a line with 7 or 9 syllables. I created the Moore’s Law poem form to offer similar flexibility for the poet to “break” or disrupt the form, as so many innovations and breakthroughs have been born from small rebellions against prior structures as well as from astonishing accidents. 

So, when writing your own Moore’s Law poem, please feel free to shrink your stanzas in half either by every stanza or every two stanzas, and to rebel a little by disrupting your own number or line count. 

The post Computer (Deep) Blue: Crafting the Moore’s Law Poem Poetic Form appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Our next big challenge is the month-long 2022 November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge, which starts on November 1, 2022.

Here is the winning Wordy 30:

“Winter Foray,” by Lisa L Stead

Field
mouse
found
bread
trail.
Score!

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Congratulations, Lisa! When I read these, I really do take it one. word. at. a. time. And it made “Winter Foray” a delight to read sonically through the first five lines, with the triumphant “Score!” at the end.

Here’s my Top 10 list:

1. Winter Foray, by Lisa L Stead
2. Cloud Burst, by Pamela L. King
3. Daddy, by Tracy Davidson
4. Cycle, by Holly Henderson
5. green color crime, by gpr crane
6. Blubber Treats, by Oliver McKeithan
7. Full Moon, by Lelawattee Mano-Rahming
8. Color of Calm, by Kimberly Sewell
9. Storm, by Candace Kubinec
10. August, by Nancy H. Allen

Congratulations to everyone in the Top 10! And to everyone who wrote a wordy 30!

The post WD Poetic Form Challenge: Wordy 30 Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Click here at any time to see what current WD Poetic Form Challenge we’re running. We’re currently running one for the Wordy 30 (deadline: September 20, 2022).

Here is the winning englyn penfyr:

“I Watch Children After a Storm,” by Jane Shlensky

O to feel joy in every day’s passage,
a message profound to say,
Look! Here, now—this is the way!

Listen to morning reborn in bird songs,
life’s wrongs righted with a word,
our choices clear and unblurred

by expectations. Only light and joy
buoy weary wings for flight,
gather hope that all is right

with the world if we can love storm’s thunder,
washed clean under rain, hearts warm.
Despite our fears, rainbows form.

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Congratulations, Jane! I really enjoyed the joy and hope to be found after the passing of a storm.

Here’s my Top 10 list:

1. I Watch Children After a Storm, by Jane Shlensky
2. Enchantment, by Amy Hadley
3. Headlights in Fog, by Taylor Graham
4. The Forest of Adair, by Pamela L. King
5. Daisy Chains and Fireflies, by Lisa L Stead
6. Hiking in the Hudson Highlands, by Shihwe Wang
7. Nana’s Hand, by Janet Benlien Reeves
8. 30 Trips per Hour, by Chuck Rhoades
9. Last Straw, by Steven R. Robertson
10. Ungainly. Beautiful, too., by gpr crane

Congratulations to everyone in the Top 10! And to everyone who wrote an englyn penfyr!

The post WD Poetic Form Challenge: Englyn Penfyr Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

This time around, we’re going to write the Wordy 30, a fun little poetic game that’s based off the popular Wordle. Find the full guidelines and examples here, but basically, you write a six-word poem comprised completely of words containing exactly five letters (like playing Wordle).

So start writing them and sharing here (on this specific post) for a chance to be published in Writer’s Digest magazine–as part of the Poetic Asides column.

Note on commenting: On this new site, you have to set up a free Disqus account and then scroll to the bottom of this page (or any page on the site) to register with the WritersDigest.com site (also free). Then, you can start commenting away!

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Here’s how the challenge works:

• Challenge is free. No entry fee.
• The winner (and sometimes a runner-up or two) will be featured in a future edition of Writer’s Digest magazine as part of the Poetic Asides column.
• Deadline 11:59 p.m. (Atlanta, GA time) on September 20, 2022.
• Poets can enter as many Wordy 30 attempts as they wish. The more “work” you make for me the better, but remember: I’m judging on quality, not quantity.
• All poems should be previously unpublished. If you have a specific question about your specific situation, just send me an email at rbrewer@aimmedia.com. Or just write a new Wordy 30. They’re fun to write; I promise.
• I will only consider the Wordy 30 poems shared in the comments below or via email with the subject line: WD Poetic Form Entry: Wordy 30. It gets too confusing for me to check other posts, go to other blogs, etc.
• Speaking of posting, set up a free Disqus account at disqus.com to comment on this post at the bottom of the page.
• Please include your name as you would like it to appear in print. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to use your user/screen name, which might be something like HaikuPrincess007 or MrLineBreaker. WD has a healthy circulation, so make it easy for me to get your byline correct.
• Finally–and most importantly–be sure to have fun!

The post WD Poetic Form Challenge: Wordy 30 appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Click here at any time to see what current WD Poetic Form Challenge we’re running. We’re currently running one for the englyn penfyr (deadline: June 30, 2022).

Here is the winning kimo:

“Iris,” by Julie A. Sellers

Overnight, some sprite of spring has magicked
fragrant dreams from unfurled buds
and gilded them with dawn.

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Congratulations, Julie! This was just a beautiful poem from the imagery to the poetic sounds and language.

Here’s my Top 10 list:

1. Iris, by Julie A. Sellers
2. Puddlushious, by Jane Shlensky
3. Broken (n), by Lisa L Stead
4. “An egg but with white yoke and yellow whites,” by Connie L Peters
5. “This morning’s air is empty of winter,” by Misky
6. “Sunlight bends through mason jar on window,” by Julie S. Paschold
7. Small Treasure, by Candace Kubinec
8. Kramatorsk, by Bruce Niedt
9. Love Comes to the Horticulturist, by Kathryn Zehm
10. Russian Missile, by Oliver McKeithan

Congratulations to everyone in the Top 10! And to everyone who wrote a kimo!

The post WD Poetic Form Challenge: Kimo Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

This time around, we’ll write the englyn penfyr, a Welsh tercet form. Find the rules for writing the englyn penfyr here. There’s a lot going on in each three-line stanza.

So start writing them and sharing here (on this specific post) for a chance to be published in Writer’s Digest magazine–as part of the Poetic Asides column.

Note on commenting: On this new site, you have to set up a free Disqus account and then scroll to the bottom of this page (or any page on the site) to register with the WritersDigest.com site (also free). Then, you can start commenting away!

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Here’s how the challenge works:

• Challenge is free. No entry fee.
• The winner (and sometimes a runner-up or two) will be featured in a future edition of Writer’s Digest magazine as part of the Poetic Asides column.
• Deadline 11:59 p.m. (Atlanta, GA time) on June 30, 2022.
• Poets can enter as many englyn penfyr attempts as they wish. The more “work” you make for me the better, but remember: I’m judging on quality, not quantity.
• All poems should be previously unpublished. If you have a specific question about your specific situation, just send me an email at rbrewer@aimmedia.com. Or just write a new englyn penfyr. They’re fun to write; I promise.
• I will only consider the englyn penfyr poems shared in the comments below or via email with the subject line: WD Poetic Form Entry: Englyn Penfyr. It gets too confusing for me to check other posts, go to other blogs, etc.
• Speaking of posting, set up a free Disqus account at disqus.com to comment on this post at the bottom of the page.
• Please include your name as you would like it to appear in print. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to use your user/screen name, which might be something like HaikuPrincess007 or MrLineBreaker. WD has a healthy circulation, so make it easy for me to get your byline correct.
• Finally–and most importantly–be sure to have fun!

The post WD Poetic Form Challenge: Englyn Penfyr appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Click here at any time to see what current WD Poetic Form Challenge we’re running. We’re currently running one for the kimo.

Here is the winning chanso:

“The Waking of a Tree,” by R. E. Wu

The woods were still in slumber
When I took a winter tryst,
With powder-dusted umber
Twining through the snowy mist
Of scattered snowflakes falling,
Falling slowly through their midst.

Above, the somber branches
Stretched and murmured, all a drowse
With pending avalanches
Clustered lace-like on their boughs
And speckled sunlight calling—
Calling for the trees to rouse.

I heard the cedars waken,
Watched their murmurs turn to moans
For stiffness wasn’t shaken
Yet from dormant winter bones—
Their creaking timbers sounding,
Sounding weary, wooden groans.

Then low beneath my awning
Shuddered with a chorused CRACK,
A thawing cedar yawning,
Stretching long her rigid back
Her pulsing heartbeats pounding,
Pounding, stretching, beating—THWACK.

I touched my chapping fingers
To her ochre overwood
(Where still the balsam lingers
Like the grove where cedars stood)
And listened to her speaking—
Speaking raptly, rapping wood.

Then on again I journeyed
Through the merry, chatting trees,
Between the timbers creaking,
Creaking warmly on the breeze.

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Congratulations, R. E. Wu! I enjoyed listening to the chatting trees and that repetition of the word at the end of the penultimate line and the first word of the final line was divine.

Here’s my Top 10 list:

1. The Waking of a Tree, by R. E. Wu
2. The Literary Feud, by Tracy Davidson
3. If I Could, by Lelawattee Mano-Rahming
4. Homeward, by Sasha A. Palmer
5. Chance of Tomorrow, by Zev Lawson Edwards
6. A Bubbles Kind of Mood, by RJ Clarken
7. House of Open Doors, by Jane Shlensky
8. Cooperation, by Connie L Peters
9. Sunday Night, by Alex Jenkins
10. A Mother’s Advice, by Trudy Bosman

Congratulations to everyone in the Top 10! And to everyone who wrote a chanso!

The post WD Poetic Form Challenge: Chanso Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

So start writing them and sharing here (on this specific post) for a chance to be published in Writer’s Digest magazine–as part of the Poetic Asides column.

Note on commenting: On this new site, you have to set up a free Disqus account and then scroll to the bottom of this page (or any page on the site) to register with the WritersDigest.com site (also free). Then, you can start commenting away!

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Here’s how the challenge works:

• Challenge is free. No entry fee.
• The winner (and sometimes a runner-up or two) will be featured in a future edition of Writer’s Digest magazine as part of the Poetic Asides column.
• Deadline 11:59 p.m. (Atlanta, GA time) on May 15, 2022.
• Poets can enter as many kimo attempts as they wish. The more “work” you make for me the better, but remember: I’m judging on quality, not quantity.
• All poems should be previously unpublished. If you have a specific question about your specific situation, just send me an email at rbrewer@aimmedia.com. Or just write a new kimo. They’re fun to write; I promise.
• I will only consider the kimo poems shared in the comments below or via email with the subject line: WD Poetic Form Entry: Kimo. It gets too confusing for me to check other posts, go to other blogs, etc.
• Speaking of posting, set up a free Disqus account at disqus.com to comment on this post at the bottom of the page.
• Please include your name as you would like it to appear in print. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to use your user/screen name, which might be something like HaikuPrincess007 or MrLineBreaker. WD has a healthy circulation, so make it easy for me to get your byline correct.
• Finally–and most importantly–be sure to have fun!

The post WD Poetic Form Challenge: Kimo appeared first on Writer's Digest.

You see, I’ve been playing Wordle the past couple months, trying to guess a five-letter word in 6 guesses (or 30 letters). So I thought it might be fun to try writing a poem in 30 letters. Here’s how it would work:

• Write a poem using exactly 30 letters
• Each line should have the same number of letters
• Each line should use one word 
• As such, poems should have one of the following combinations of lines x letters: 6 lines x 5 letters each line (like Wordle); 5 lines x 6 letters each line; 3 x 10; 10 x 3; 15 x 2; 2 x 15; 30 x 1; and I don’t know if there are any 30-letter words, but I suppose such a word could be a one-liner

So let’s see what we get; I hope you’ll poem along.

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Here’s my attempt at a Wordy 30 poem:

“QUEST,” by Robert Lee Brewer

ENTER
BELOW
WHERE
STUMP
WITCH
SINGS

The post Wordy 30: Poetic Games appeared first on Writer's Digest.

*****

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).

Click to continue.

*****

Here’s my attempt at an Abecedarium poem:

“Basic,” by Robert Lee Brewer

An acrostic poem
begins with letters
creating structure and
determining how the poem
evolves over time. As
for an abecedarium, the
goal is to let the alphabet
hang out along the left and
inch down one letter at a time.
Just a simple trick shows poets
know how to say their ABCs and
lets readers anticipate the
multitude of possible words
needed to continue the
obligatory forced line breaks and
passage of one letter to the next.
Question the validity of the
rewards for this form if you wish;
still, it’s popular for a reason.
The challenge of making it continue
under the constraints of the alphabet
validates many poets in their pursuit
with the understanding that ABC leads to
X
Y
Z.

The post Abecedarium (or Abecedarius): Poetic Forms appeared first on Writer's Digest.