Saturday Mix – Lucky Dip, 21 October 2017

Welcome to the Saturday Mix, 21 October 2017!

This week I have reached into my mystery bag and pulled out a Fib! No, not a lie…a Fibonacci poem, affectionately known as a ‘Fib’. Your challenge, is to write a Fibonacci poem about an animal.

“Poetry for math geeks? With fibs, the literary and mathematical meet.”

You may be thinking to yourself, What on earth is an Fibonacci poem? 
Luckily, Deborah Haar Clark at the Poetry Foundation has an explanation…

Gregory K. Pincus wasn’t expecting to start a movement when he posted a Fib to his blog. The Los Angeles writer, volunteer librarian, and dad was simply commemorating the opening of National Poetry Month by sharing the six-line, 20-syllable poem.

“I put it on the Web as a writing exercise,” says Pincus, who dubbed the poems ‘Fibs’ for their basis in the Fibonacci sequence. The number of syllables in each line of the poem is the sum of the previous two lines: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. “The constrained form makes you very conscious of word choice.”

Pincus came up with Fibs while pondering a haiku writing exercise. A confessed math geek, he sought a form that offered added precision and was intrigued by Fibonacci numbers. In nature, the sequence is evident in the spirals of nautilus shells, waves, pine cones, and sunflower seeds, to name a few.

How to write a Fib
A Fibonacci poem is a six-line, 20 syllable poem.

The number of syllables in each line of the poem is the sum of the previous two lines: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8

An example of a Fibonacci poem

Dunk!
by Gregory Pincus
Slam!
Dunk!
Soaring . . .
I’m scoring.
Crowd keeps on roaring.
In my dreams I’m unstoppable.

Originally Published: November 20th, 2007

And here is another example (by me!)

WARBLING

I
hear
warbling
from your perch
high above the ground
using slang I don’t understand

By Sarah ©2017

Good luck with your ‘Lucky Dip Fib’ – I can’t wait to see what you come up with! Don’t forget to tag ‘Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie’, ‘Saturday Mix’, and hashtag #LuckyDip.

As always, make sure you link your fabulous creation to the helpful Mister Linky.