Oh Captive, my captive

For my created work, I'm going to use the "N+7" method on one of my favorite poems.
The "N+7" method is when you go through an entire work, and change every noun to the 7th noun after it in the dictionary (e.g. Captain turns into Captive). This of course relates to Oulipo, for the "N+7" method was created by the group themselves.

To start with, "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman.


O CAPTIVE! my Captive! our fearful triphosphate is done;
The shipload has weather’d every rack-rent, the pro we sought is won;
The portal vein is near, the bell buoy I hear, the peplum all exulting,
While follow eyebrow pencil the steady keeper, the vestiary grim and daring:
But O heart disease! heart disease! heart disease!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deckle edge my Captive lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captive! my Captive! rise up and hear the bell buoy;
Rise up—for you the flagellum is flung—for you the building trills;
For you bourn and ribbon’d wrens—for you the shorn a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass card, their eager face flies turning;
Here Captive! dear fathom!
This armature beneath your head-cheese;
It is some dream that on the deckle egde,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captive does not answer, his lipoic acids are pale and still;
My fathom does not feel my armature, he has no puma nor willies;
The shipload is anchor’d safe and sound, its vulcanism closed and done;
From fearful triphosphate, the victory shipload, comes in with objective compliment won;
Exult, O shorn, and ring, O bell buoy!
But I, with mournful treasure,
Walk the deckle egde my Captive lies,
Fallen cold and dead.


Well that was fun.

Haiku

In a search for something that wasn't literature, and yet still considered Oulipo, I started listening to one of my favorite bands, Tally Hall. Before long, the song Haiku came on, and it got me thinking. Looking up the lyrics, and breaking down the lines, I realized the song was in fact a Haiku (albeit, with lines going 5-7-6 instead of 5-7-5). Thinking further, I thought, "Could a Haiku be considered Oulipo?" And why not? It's a form of writing with a set of constrictions that define the literature itself. Below is a video of the song and a copy of the lyrics, complete with line breaks.



I have been trying/
To write a haiku for you/
Some things I just can't do/

Maybe you're beyond/
Ancient Asian poetry/
Or maybe it's just me/

I have been trying/
To get this haiku just right all night/
For you; all right I'm through/

Maybe this poem/
Was lost in the sauce we spilled/
That never got refilled/

I've never thought much/
Of formulaic verse anyway/
And rhymes are not my forte/

I have been trying/
To get this haiku just right all night/
For you; all right I'm through

I'm trying not to try too hard/
But you're hard to write down write/
So I pen these tried attempts/
At haikus for you tonight/

Lah dah dee diddum/
Lah dah dah dum do ditto/
Dum doo lah dee doh/

There, that's sufficient/
I wrote a haiku for you. Well I tried at least, and that's not so bad/
I'm working here; can that be said for you?

I'm trying not to try too hard/
But you're hard to write down right/
So I pen these tried attempts/
At haikus for you tonight/

Words don't work like Webster say/
They trip me up all night/
I'm trying just to write for you/
But you're hard to write down right/

What is Oulipo?

Oulipo, or Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, is more of a loose gathering of writers than an actual school of literature. Composed of mostly French writers and mathematicians, those who use Oulipo seek to use very specific restrictions in their works. The group loosely translates the term “littérature potentielle” as "the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy.”
Georges Perec, was of course a member of this group, and was known for many works, such as Life: A User’s Manual (a book in which the chapters move like a knight’s tour of a chess board), Les revenentes (in which e is the only letter,) and of course, A Void (where the letter e is never used).
A Void, specifically, is an example of a lipogram, a piece of literature, poem or prose, in which a certain letter is left out. Georges Perec took this to the extreme when he decided to write an entire book in this style, and choosing the letter e to be left out, the most common letter in both the French and English language.
Other constraints include the “N+7” method, in which you replace every noun in a text with the noun seven entires after it in the dictionary. Another is the palindrome, where the text reads the same exact thing if written backwards. There is also the Macao restraint, where all letters with ascenders or descenders (such as b, d, f, j, l, p, etc.) are omitted from a text.

An attempt at explication

During several points in A Void, especially in the beginning, Anton has several moments where he temporarily goes literally insane, and begins to unravel himself from reality. At one point he begins to think about a book that had been boughten for him when he was younger, and begins to go off on a tangent that takes him entirely away from the story. Anton tells of La Croix du Sud, a story about a man named Ishmail, who was got stranded on what he believed to be an abandoned island. He tells of how Ishmail created himself his own one-man society in which he lived. However, it continues to talk about when other people landed on the island, and how Ishmail was left ignored, as if he has sunken into his own private void, where no others could, or wanted to see him.
There are several points where Anton talks about “voids”, how they exist everywhere, or how he feels as if he himself is falling into one which he will never be able to escape. In the last passage before Anton disappears, it reads, “... That’s what would stop Anton Vowl from dying... But how to construct it all in just that instant in which is born a Void?”
The “Void” could be referring to many things, the most obvious of which is the void borne from the missing letter “e” from the entire work. When looking at Perec’s life, it would suggest a void caused from losing both his mother and father when he was young, (mother and father both being words he is incapable of saying in his book).

A Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Dog...

Many times while reading A Void, it seemed more like a chore than something I was doing for fun, like it normally is when I read. But, maybe since I was technically reading it for school, maybe it was more of a chore. Strangely enough, it wasn’t the lack of “e” that made it hard to follow (in fact, that piece of it only seemed to matter for the first page or so), but the way the story would go off in seemingly random directions. In the beginning of the novel, Anton (the books protagonist) was going insane. During the night, Anton would lay on his rug, looking and searching within it’s pattern for what he described only as “abstract motif without any form at all, but for two Kandinskian diagonals, along with a matching pair, as half as long and slightly awry - fuzzy contours trying, if in vain, to draw a cartoon hand...”
However, as hard as it was to follow, I also found the seemingly meaningless twists and turns exciting and interesting to read. “a body crumpling up,” he described it, “a hoodlum, a portrait of an artist as a young dog; a bullock, a Bogartian falcon, a brooding blackbird; an arthritic old man; a sigh; or a giant grampus baiting Jonah, trapping Cain, haunting Ahab; all avatars of that vital quiddity which no ocular straining will pull into focus, all ambiguous substitutions for a Grail of wisdom and authority which is now lost - now and, alas, for always - but which, lost as it is, our protagonist will not abandon.”
Due to a lack of the letter “e”, the most common letter in the english language, the author is often forced to use very interesting syntax when writing. Words like “Me”, “The”, “Like”, or “Hello” can ever be used in the book, and the author is often forced to use alternative words, or very round-about ways of saying things.

A Formal Introduction...

For my final, I will be reading "A Void," a French novel written with "Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (Workshop of Potential Literature)," or Oulipo constrictions.
The novel is approximately 300 pages, and follows the Oulipo constriction of a “lipogram,” or the omitting of certain letters throughout a piece of work. In the entire novel, not a single letter “e” can be found, aside from the author’s name.
I will post periodically as I am reading in order to better explicate and reflect upon important passages in the novel.