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Instruction

by: Renee

transribed from renee's blog entry+an email exchange, transcribed by jb

Thus far, out concept for the Instruction tab has involved either creating a form of sorts that users can follow in constructing their own poetry or simply adding definitions of different verse forms that they can consult during their writing process. I wonder if at some point we could make this section of the website even more interactive, especially since it seems pretty static at this point. Here are a couple ideas, I thought up (though they’re based on what I’ve seen on other websites):

  • Interviews with poets that focus on their writing process that users can watch to get tips on their own process.
  • A chat function so users can either workshop live with other users or a featured poet (I imagine this latter option would be limited to a set number of users).
  • In-person workshops that we, the creators, organize in various cities. The leader of the workshop would be required to video it and attendees would submit versions of the poems both before and after the workshop for the website.

Overall, I think this would make the website much more dynamic and interactive. Perhaps we could even start publishing our own poetry magazine to take advantage of features unique to the print medium, like whitespace.

Instructional material possibly to be included/expanded upon with toys:

Villanelle

A First line
B
A Third line

A
B
A First line again

A
B
A Third line again

A
B
A First line again

A
B
A Third line again

A
B
A First line again
A Third line again

Rhythm and line length can vary. Rather than simply repeating the refrains exactly, poets often vary the lines in their subsequent manifestations to create a progression within the poem.

Sestina

The Sestina is an unrhymed verse poem with thirty-nine lines. It’s divided into six six-line stanzas, with an envoi of three lines, which deploys the six end-words that occur in every stanza (but with a different order each time). Each stanza builds on the previous stanza by reversing a pairing from the earlier lines. The first line of the second stanza must pair its end-words with the last line of the first. The second line of the second stanza must do this with the first line of the first and so on.

Pantoum

The actual poem length varies, but it is comprised of quatrains which rhymy abab. The first and last line must be the same. The second and fourth lines of the first quatrain become the first and third lines of the next, and so on with each quatrain. In the final quatrain the unrepeated first and third lines are used in reverse as second and fourth lines.

Petrarchan Sonnet

A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D

C
D
E
C
D
E

Shakespearean Sonnet

A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G

Iambic – one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

Pyrrhic – two unstressed syllables

Spondee – two stressed syllables

Trochee – one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable

Anapest – two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable

Monometer – poems with one foot  to the line

Dimeter – poems with two feet to the line

Trimeter – three feet to the line

Tetrameter – four feet to the line

Pentameter – five feet to the line

Hexameter – six feet to the line

Heptameter – seven feet to the line

Octameter – eight feet to the line

Jacob's Notes

The idea of games (and play in general) as instructional material is a proven commodity, and something that could really take the idea of the site beyond grumpy artists playing around with words to avoid writing essays to something actually possibly useful.

The problem I had with working nearly any of these in is the sheer undertaking it would require--haven already bitten off more than I could chew with the site I quickly realized that we would only be able to truly put the bare bones of the site up, more of a demonstration of what could be instead of what should. Admitally, when I took on this idea and ran with it I was locked into a tunnel vision of "I will no longer need myspace or bored.com when this is done," and was filled with the fanciful parts of the site and not much else. The more I thought about it the more I realized that including an educational component to the site would be vital part of the site--not only to make it worthwhile, but to build a user base. Social networks come and go (there have been dozens to attempt to do an art-based social network. to my memory, deviant art is the only one to thrive, and that is much more image based). And while people may find the meme aspect entertaining, one can only get excited over magnets for so long.

Fridge Magnets

by: Jacob Burch

As if often the case with online development, your end product is very seldom what you initially hoped and dreamed. While i'm extremely pleased with the infrastructure of the site and the flexibility to create more and more toys, the first thing us three really ever came up with was the idea to dynamically generate a "fridge magnet" game in flash using a variety of sources--poems on the page, random words from the word bank, even news articles. And after all, flash 5 was easy in the eighth grade, so how hard could be to catch 13 year old me up to flash CS3?

Hard, apparently. The development from ActionScript1 to AS3 makes the two nearly different languages in my eyes, and the result was a lot of frustration and (likely) determent to making other toys on the site. Alas, at least I have the concept:

a server-side script (perl, python, php) grabs a string from somewhere based on GET data--poetry database, a random generation of words, an entry in an RSS feed on a blog or news site--and preg_splits it into all its little words. From there, the script random picks out 30 or so (if the number is greater than that), throws them into an array and displays a JSON or XML formated string.

The flash movie passes on the necessary variables (source and ID number if necessary) and gets back the JSON/XML bit and begins to do its work creating cute little magnets out of it

I'd imagine a version iteration would look something along the lines of...

  • Alpha: Ugly little magnets that parse a static string. Probably one of my lame poems.
  • Beta: Still ugly. maybe i've added a border by now, but at least its pulling one source of dynamic data
  • V0.1: As ugly as a programmer like me can get them and pulling in one or two sources of information. Probably a little funky when the words over lap too much as I haven't thought to put in a layer-change mechanism.
  • V0.2: Ahha! Right clicking now pushes the on-hover element to the very bottom
  • V0.3: More sources, random generation
  • V1: Bug fixes done and there we have it

That's the goal I set myself, knowing full well there would be no limit to features to be added later: ability to save one's working using a SWF->JPG php/GD class, , being able to grow/shrink/rotate the magnets, adding custom magnets

A few links I came across to help me on the journey:

WordToys is a collaborative project aimed at exploring the limits of creative originality. It was formed in 2008.