Play around with the sonnets by manipulating the numbers on the left.
The radio buttons give the complete sonnets.
To get a random selection click on "Mix it up".
Ouvroir de littérature potentielle
The Oulipian constraint is used as a means of triggering ideas and inspiration;
Initiated by Raymond Queneau, who took ten of his sonnets and cut them up into strips by the line.
He reckoned that with 140 strips, each containing one sentence, he could manufacture
100,000,000,000,000 poems.
I.O.W. 1 with 14 zeroes.
Cent mille milliards de poèmes
He used scissors, I wanted to do it electronically.
Hopefully this works.I've stuffed it so full of javascripts, which may start to fight each other and clog up the works.
Never mind.
Queneau's French sonnets are on the right.
Mine are not a translation, but just a bit of fun to get an impression of what they tried to achieve with these methods.
Writing 10 sonnets in one evening, even silly ones, is quite a marathon.
The fact that I kept to the French rhyme didn't help: there isn't much about that rhymes with 'clock' or 'toque'.
This is not going to be visible on a phone.
Now also visible on chrome.
