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Saturday, February 27, 2021

100 thousand billion pantoums

 So my idea is to take a poem and write ten variants of each line, like Queneau did in Cent mille milliards de poemes, a sonnet with 10 to 14th power of possible versions. I will begin with Ashbery's "Pantoum":


Eyes shining without mystery

Footprints eager for the past

Through the vague snow of many clay pipes

And what is in store? 


For every line, there will be 10 variants. 

So for "eyes shining without mystery" I might say


The guardian's blank stare / A landscape with no enigmas / etc... 


So the first stanza of the first one would be 


The guardian's blank stare

Venom on the window sill

In an imprecise landscape of salt

What birds emerge in the fog? 


There are 14 lines, so the total number of variants would be a hundred thousand billion. 




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