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Can you hear me now?

I love strict poetic forms. I think creativity comes not from total freedom — but from arbitrary structural limitations that compel artists to be concise, or to take the history of their media into account. That’s why, for example, I love a tightly-structured pop song more than freeform jazz. In poetry, I think the single-coolest form is the nonrhyming petrarchan sonnet executed in a loose iambic pentameter: A perfect amalgam of structure and freedom. (This is also why I think e. e. cummings is the finest modern poet in English, because he perfectly balanced a love of structure with the liberating dictates of free verse. His sonnets are just off-the-hook fantastic, and despite the apparent chaos of his more open-ended writing, there is virtually always a meticulously architected subskeleton of meter or rhyme.)
I was thus delighted to discover “The Fib”, a new poetic form based on … the Fibonacci sequence!
It’s the invention of Gregory K, a blogger and L.A. screenwriter, and it’s a simple conceit: Each line of the poem has as many syllables as its corresponding place in the Fibonacci sequence. The sequence, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a neatly recursive thing: Each number is the product of the last two in line, with 0 and 1 being the first two digits to start the sequence running. So it goes 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 33, etc. As a poetic device, this produces poems that slowly cascade from terse, haiku-like concision into a waterfall of prose. Several people showed up at Gregory’s blog to try their hand at writing some; an example:
I
want
to be
all the things
my mother said I
couldn’t be in my own life time.
The thing about the Fib, though, is that after the ninth line, you’re dealing with 50-plus syllables, which means you’re essentially writing prose paragraphs. By the 21st line, you’re dealing with a hefty 10,946 syllables — which translates to about 6,700 words of English prose. That’s an entire short story on its own, or a chapter from a book.
Thus, the Fib is an incredibly unique form, in that it spans the entire spectrum of literature: It begins with uses of language so concise that meaning and beauty hang on a single word, then transforms into a Proustian torrent of storytelling. Imagine the cool ways those two polar opposites could work together!
Even more lovely is the fact that the Fibonacci sequence officially begins with a zero. That means that the true first line of every Fib is always the same: Silence.
(Thanks to Slashdot for this one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
The “Milky Way Transit Authority” map
Should automobile software be open-sourced?
My Bookforum review of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget”
Molecular secrets of the “iron-plated snail”
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January 31, 2010 » 07:29 PM
V. A. To me death seems to be an evil.
M. What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?
A. To both.
M. It is a misery, then, because an evil?
A. Certainly.
M. Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable?
A. So it appears to me.
M. Then all are miserable?
A. Every one.
January 24, 2010 » 03:22 PM
One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though. (via Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009
)
January 15, 2010 » 01:36 PM
BEYOND AWESOME. They are announcing a recall of the Plush Uterus “due to a potential choking hazard for children”. To apply for it, “Please send an email to the address below with the subject line, ‘UTERUS OPT OUT’”.
January 14, 2010 » 10:04 PM
“To order, please TYPE “YES” IN CHECKBOX BELOW TO AGREE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS PLUSH MUST BE KEPT AWAY FROM KIDS (it is a sex organ, after all). If it is not checked, WE WILL NOT SEND THE UTERUS.” (via @ibogost)
January 11, 2010 » 01:45 PM
I watched Space: 1999 back in the day, but I swear to god I do not remember this scene.
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