Fibonacci poetry was founded by Gregory K. Pincus last year as a 6-line poem that follows the Fibonacci sequence for syllable count per line.

For the 6-line poem that means:

• 1 syllable for first line
• 1 syllable for second line
• 2 syllables for third
• 3 syllables for fourth
• 5 syllables for fifth
• 8 syllables for sixth

An example:

"Confession"

My
first
poem
was not a
Fibonacci or
even an unrhymed sestina.

There are variations where the Fibonacci expands even further with each line, but to understand how to accomplish this, you need to understand the Fibonacci math sequence of starting with 0 and 1 and then adding the last two numbers together to add to infinity.

0+1=1
1+1=2
1+2=3
2+3=5
3+5=8
5+8=13
8+13=21
13+21=34
and so on and so forth...

Anyway, those lines can easily get more and more unwieldy the more you let them expand.

Here's how my example might expand, for instance:

"A Longer Confession"

My
first
poem
was not a
Fibonacci or
even an unrhymed sestina;
my first poem was not a sonnet or triolet,
a ghazal or haiku; my first poem wasn't free form, either: I don't know what it was. 

Yeah, 21 syllables is a lot of syllables for one line. So, there's another variation that has taken flight in making Fibonacci poems that ascend and descend in syllables.

My tired example:

"A Bell Curve Confession"

My
first
poem
was not a
Fibonacci or
even an unrhymed sestina;
my first poem wasn't a sonnet,
triolet, ghazal,
haiku or
even
free
verse.

For poets who also like mathematics (am I the only one raising my hand?), this is definitely an interesting form to get your mind working.

*****

Here's more on the Fibonacci poem:

• A New Mathematical Form, by Georgia Luna Smith Faust
• Fibonacci Poems Multiply on the Web After Blog's Invitation, by Motoko Rich
• The Fib, by Fibonacci originator Gregory K. Pincus

*****

Check out other Poetic Forms here.

SPAM prompt line: There are three occasions during the year when you can…

I never clicked on the e-mail that accompanied this line to see what you could do on those three occasions--or to find out what the occasions were. Considering the nature of most SPAM, I didn't really want to know.

So it's up to you to decide.  What are the three occasions--and what are you able or permitted to do? You can start with the occasions and make a list (holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, third Friday of every month--start with the obvious and then stretch out with your imagination, these don't have to be the same type of occasion each time); or you can start with whatever it is you can do (kiss a stranger, cheat the government, do the Snoopy joy dance, call in to work sick without being sick--it's totally wide open, make a long list). Or you can do the old "repeat the statement" approach, i.e., write "There are three occasions during the year when you can…" over and over, with a different finish each time.

Once you settle on the occasions and what you can do, carry on with your poem and see where it takes you.

Happy writing!

--Nancy

Did you see our recent discussions of epitaphs here and here? There's a place that takes poems-on-tombstones a step further--the Cimitirul Vesel ("Merry Cemetery") of Sapanta, Romania. Poets in the funeral business: an overlooked opportunity?

And yes, I'd like my tombstone to make people laugh. (Thanks to The Poetry Hut for the original link to this story.)

--Nancy

I read Robert's posts about haiku here and here, as well as Michael Dylan Welch's comments, with great interest. I've tried haiku in the past, knew I failed, and have also felt "fearful" about trying again. I'm intrigued by everything that goes into writing a true haiku, including saying more with less.

In e-mailing back and forth about an article for the 2009 Poet's Market, Michael and I discussed this fear a bit. I promised Michael I would seriously attempt haiku and post a few here at Poetic Asides.

I realized there was no more challenging subject about which to say more with less than the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I experienced September 11, 2001 in a very peripheral way--literally. That morning my mother and I were in Gettysburg, having spent the night en route to a few days in Amish country. We were actually blissfully unaware of the attacks as we searched for Marianne Moore's grave in Evergreen Cemetery and contemplated the beautiful, peaceful scene in the Valley of Death from Little Round Top.

It wasn't until we stopped at an antique mall halfway to York that we first heard what had happened. In shock, we immediately started back to Ohio. With Washington so close to the south, there was a special urgency in the radio reports we were listening to. In one of the rest stations on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, we overheard plenty of discussion of the New York part of the tragedy, as people wandered with cell phones to their ears, absorbed in agitated conversations, their eyes wide with fear and confusion.

And, as we sped through Somerset County within miles of Shanksville, we passed emergency equipment heading east, lights flashing, although Flight 93 had gone down hours before.

In 2002, on our way home from the Dodge Poetry Festival, we made a detour off the turnpike to visit the Flight 93 memorial. It was only a year and week later; a mood of requiem was still strong--at the festival, in the small towns of New Jersey, and in Pennsylvania.

It's definitely a challenge to distill all that into captured moments; to forego the emotions, the intensity of the memories, the politics, the impulse to comment at length and memorialize. But I said I'd try, so here they are--my haiku for September 11 (attempted):

bone-white stones

          ***

clear September day

soft yellow showers

stillness on Round Top

cows and goldenrod

field in late summer

grass conceals the scars

--Nancy

P.S. Here's a moving piece about an artist's musical response to 9/11.