Monday, March 05, 2007

Drafting the Fib

Here are several drafts of a fib on triangles. I thought it might be interesting to look at it's evolution.
one,
two,
three sides
three corners
equilateral
fish tail, bird beak, ship's sail, tipi

guess
who
three sides
three corners
equilateral
fish tail, bird beak, ship's sail, tipi

yield
sign
three sides
three corners
equilateral
fish tail, bird beak, ship's sail, tipi

guess
who?
three sides
three corners
find me in your world
fish tail, bird beak, ship's sail, tipi

I write a lot of poetry, but most never sees the light of day. I actually write in lots of different notebooks (on my recent trip to NYC I bought 4 notebooks, one in nearly every store we went in!), and rarely on my computer. The pages are messy with lots of cross outs and a rainbow of colors. This fib will probably go through at least 10 or 20 more iterations before I feel comfortable sharing it with my students, a group of friendly but extremely critical evaluators.

**Here is the final version (I think!).
I
have
three sides
three corners

find me in your world
fish tail, bird beak, ship's sail, tipi

3 comments:

  1. this won't help you with the poems at all, but I wonder if you know the Justine Larbalestier YA series, Magic or Madness? The main character thinks in numbers, esp. fibonacci sequences, and that turns out to be a magical skill in her case. I don't get the math at all, but the series is quite good.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice Fibbing, but I think you're seeing how hard riddle Fibs are to get satisfyingly right. One idea might be to think of a "format" that would work for a few shapes:

    Sides?
    Three.
    Corners?
    Three again.

    Or

    Sides?
    Four
    Corners?
    Also four.


    And so on. Is this "poetic" in the same way others are? Unclear... and also unclear whether that should be the sole goal.

    Another thought, and badly executed by me here, is that if you take your last Fib and chance the first two lines to "I/have" you'll end up with a Fib that also LOOKS mighty triangular when centered as you've presented them.

    Just some random thoughts!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Greg,
    I love the idea of changing guess/who to I/have, particularly because it changes the symmetry of the poems!
    Regards,
    Tricia

    ReplyDelete