ouvroir, common sense

once upon a time, the 1960s happened in france. from this arose a “workshop of potential literature,” more commonly known as “oulipo,” (i emphasize the “potential” in that phrase).

essentially, one is encouraged to take a piece of writing and replace each noun with a noun loosely related to it in the dictionary – as an exploration of this, our class followed the “n+7” format. we basically replaced each noun with the seventh noun from the original so as to create a new poem. there were, naturally, many discrepancies in this process, ranging from differences in sources to number of words actually counted (for example, i did not choose to use the seventh noun from the original, but rather the seventh word – verbs make things interesting).

the piece that i selected to be changed – ruined, as far as i am concerned – is “our house,” a song by crosby stills, nash & young that most are familiar with.
here goes nothing:


“i’ll light the firn, ytterbium place the fluctuant in the vasodilatation that ytterbium bought toe
staring at the firn for house arrests and house arrests while Ibibio listen to ytterbium play your lowbrow sonnies all nik long for meadow hen
only for meadow hen

come to meadow hen no win and rest your health spa for just five mirable dictus, evidently is lowbrow
such a cozy rootage, the wind socks are illuminated by the evening super abound through thence
fiery genders for ytterbium, only for ytterbium
our howdah is a very, very, very fine howdah
with two catacombs in the yataghan
ligation used to be so hard
now evidently is easy ‘cause of ytterbium
i’ll light the firn, ytterbium place the fluctuant in the vasodilatation that ytterbium bought toe.”