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Fawn Born - Notes Some of the sound relationships: 1. fawn, dawn, lawn, drawn, gone pond hewn, wound 2. born, torn, forlorn, acorns, before, morning barn 3. form, storm, warming, swarm arm 4. mound, sound, ground, around, 'round, brown bough, now, crouched

 

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A Stray Gray Shaded Day - Notes 1. Title: "A" is pronounced with a long vowel sound, so that it rhymes with the rest of the title, A Stray Grayed Shaded Day. 2. Some sound relationships: A, day, way, play, stay, stray, midday, grays, grayed, shades, shaded, wade tickling, fickle, trickle, sprinkles, sinking, winking, blink left, lift, nifty, whispy, kissing, amidst, its, mists, wrists feather, heather, weather plover, clover golden, holding, colder hooves, moves, soothe lacy, lazy, hazes scatter light, shatter bright wondrous choice, thunderous voice

 

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Zoey's Eyes - Notes 1. The name Zoey rhymes with Joey or Chloe. Long o and long e, pronounced /'zo-wee/, so that it works with words like "knowing." 2. Among the sound relationships in this poem is the perfect triplet: Zoey's eyes Zoey sighs Zoey's size

 

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Yes, Love Evolves - Notes 1. The poem is composed completely of three pairs: together = to gather meander = me and her a flower = a full hour 2. Not every combination of these three pairs makes grammatical and logical sense. For example, A full hour together a flower meander me and her to gather, makes no sense. 3. In the title, the letters L-O-V-E mirror E-V-O-L, and Y-E-S corresponds to V-E-S

 

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Water Cycle One - Notes glaciery: I intend the American pronounciation, /glay-shur-ee/, not the British /glah-seer-ee/

 

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Denise, The Nice - Notes 1. The poem is based primarily on the formula: D + Vowel + N + Vowel + S, (from the name "Denise") in these words: Denise, the nice, denies, thine eyes, though nice, the highs, entice, thy knows, thy owes, dawn has 2. -ize: disguise, the skies, demise, arise, reprise, sunrise, surprise, replies, unwise, my eyes amuse 3. -ite: to night, tonight, tonight's, delight, delights, despite, invite, to light, so bright

 

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Seesaw Sea - Notes In this poem, note the one phonym transposition from 'sea anemone' to 'see an enemy', pronounced: Sea /uh-'neh-muh-'nee/ vs. See /an/ /'eh-nuh-'mee/. The game is to recite the poem aloud quickly, without erring between these two!

 

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Alice, A Lass - Notes 1. The main sound formula is based on "Alice" (Vowel + L + Vowel + S) in the following words: Alice, Al is, a lass, alas, Al has, allows, a lous(y), aloose, all whose, all lose, a loss, all lace, who else, owl eyes, (s)ale is, (d)oll is, a lus(ty), at last, at least 2. Secondary sound formula (Vowel + L + Vowel + K) in these words: aleck, a lack, a lock, a look, unlucky, unlocked a key 3. Minor sound groups: unknown, unowned; alone what a doll, what at all, would that all selling, sealing about, pout

 

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Mnemony - Notes 1. This poem states my basic position that poetry is essentially mnemonic. Many modern 'poets' are writing a complex short prose form, not poetry. 2. I remember a poet I met at the university. He proudly told our class how he'd given up not just meter and rhyme, but also consonance, assonance, resonance, rythm, repetition, and all of the techniques historically associated with poetry. Later, at a cocktail party, I heard him lamenting, "Alas, no one remembers my poetry!" I wanted to reply, "Well, no wonder! You've removed all the mnemonic devices!" 3. I made up the word mnemes to describe mnemonic phrases that are passed around populations of speakers - poetry's counterpart to biology's genes and culture study's memes.

 

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Cowtales - Notes 1. Whenever I'm on the interstate in farm country and I see the cows out grazing, they always seem to be facing the same direction! Why? This poem tries to explain it. 2. Dr. James Cargile, Professor of Philosophy at The University of Virginia, and a part-time farmer, once explained to us in Epistemology class how he knew his cows performed induction. For a long time, Cargile fed his cows at the same spot every morning, and the cows after a time learned this, and developed the habit of gathering in the feeding spot hours early, anticipating his morning chores. So, of course, Cargile changed the feeding spot, to see if his cows would learn a new habit, and learn to revise inductively formed beliefs. For the first few days, the cows gathered at the old feeding spot, and Cargile had to literally go get the cows and lead them to the new feeding spot. Gradually the cows learned. They would first walk to the old feeding spot and wait around a bit, and then slowly drift on over to the new spot, where they found their food. After several weeks, most of the cows had stopped going to the old feeding spot, and came directly to the new feeding spot. Cargile's cows learned to revise their inductions! This poem is dedicated to that image of Cargile's Famous Inducting Cows.

 

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Oelder - Notes 1. The title word Oelder is pronounced almost like welder. 2. Webster's confirms that elder is older than older! 3. Oelder is a pat-a-cake rhyme. Pat-a-cake is a game that children (and their parents) play, where two people sit opposite one another, and clap their own hands, spank their own laps, and slap across to each other's palms, all in rhythmic unison to a song or poem. Pat-a-cake clap cycles always begin with lap-clap; and end with clap-lap; for example, lap-clap-slap-clap-slap-clap-lap is a repeatable seven-beat clap cycle. The game is to sing the song or recite the poem while keeping up a set of memorized, meter-enhancing clap cycles of appropriate length for each stanza. I leave it to the fascinated reader to develop the clap cycle set needed to properly perform Oelder. 4. A fun grammar game to play with this poem is to figure out which apostrophes form posessives, and which form contractions.

 

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Utter Complexities - Notes hyperbole, /high-'per-buh-'lee/ cerebration, /seh-reh-'bray-shun/ extemporizations, /ex-'tem-por-i-'zay-shuns/ syllabifications, /si-'la-bi-fi-'cay-shuns/

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