Rectilinear poetry
WTF? How dare you? Yeah, yeah 😊. Back in 1996, when I first got online, I spent a week in Usenet's rec.arts.poetry (or rec.arts.poems). Someone made an off-the-cuff remark about what he termed "rectilinear poetry", where each line has an identical number of characters. This is only visible with a monospace font, like Courier. Hitting the "justify" icon while using a proportional font doesn't count!
I obsessed over the idea for a week, and created a dozen "rectilinear" versions of very well known poems. I didn't pretend that I had improved them in any way, but I found it useful practice. My self-imposed rules were:
- Retain the original character and meaning as much as possible
- The rhymes and rhythms must still work
- Don't increase the line length significantly
I had a look around just now but could only easily find two online, William Blake's "The Tyger" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Feel free to try it yourself. Wrapping each verse in code tags seems to work to post on Steemit. Below is the squared-up Blake one, with 33 characters a line. Note for pedants: the two lines that seem to be one character short have question marks in the middle of the line requiring two following spaces (1996!) and not one.
Tyger, Tyger, here burning bright
In blackened forests of the night
What immortal hand or awesome eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what far-flung deeps and skies
Burnt the fire of thine own eyes!
On what wings dare he now aspire?
What the hand dare hold the fire?
And what shoulders, and what art,
Do twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart begins to beat
What dread hand; what dread feet?
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace forg'd thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare all its deadly terror clasp?
When the stars threw their spears
Watering heaven with their tears:
Did he now smile his work to see?
He who'd made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger, Tyger, here burning bright
In blackened forests of the night
What immortal hand or awesome eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Ooh, ooh, I found my original rec.arts.poems thread, although the formatting has been lost. My challenge to the community there was:
The ultimate challenge a poet could have
Writing verses both right-flush and left
With meter and rhyme in a sensible frame
Is a feat most uncommonly awesomely deft
Anyone there who dares call himself poet
Or herself poet I might allow to be fair
Should be able to write in a uniform way
If only to show off their dazzling flair
So each of you there who can actually do
What the technically-challenged will not
Is invited to post the result for us all
Show the rest of us here what you've got
Nice poetry!keep on flourishing.
Thank you. I watched that Greg Hunter/Rob Kirby interview too, although there wasn't much new information in that one. And Black Mirror! Oh yes, if you ever have time.