Last week I became enamored with the Recamán sequence and over the weekend I decided to use it to create a poem. The beginning of the sequence is 0,1,3,6,2,7,13,20,12,11,22,10,23,9,24,8,25… (read more about how the sequence works). I then listed out the alphabet along the long side of a piece of paper with A=0, B=1, C=2, D=3, etc. Using the Recamán sequence as a guideline, I ended up with a new string of letters: A,B,D,G,C,H,N,U,M,V,L,W,K,X,J,Y,I,Z. The first word of my poem begins with an A, the second word with B, the third D, and so on as the new string dictated.

Recamán Poem

A Beautiful Day
Greater Chances Hovering
Numbers Under Moon

Vast Language Wonders
Keeping Xenophobes Jumping
Yowling In Zion

The exercise was just for fun, and a pretty ‘loose’ application compared to some of the other mathy applications that I do, but I thought it would be a great creative limitation to impose on a poem. As an additional restraint, I decided to make the poem follow the haiku form (5,7,5 syllable structure). See below for the original text.

 

Can’t Stop The Now...

More To Explore

ZONE NIGHTS: Grow Crazy

Con un ritmo muy garage rock, que por momentos, se vuelve un poco punk, Grow Crazy, está listo para darte el empujón que necesitás tener en éste

Indie Criollo: Sparkle

Review of William’s single “Sparkle” from the Ecuadorian blog Indie Criollo.  Sparkle no quiere guardarse nada ante los oídos de quienes están interesados en

Why “IS”?

After releasing 16 albums and 13 standalone singles, I permanently closed the lid on the William Steffey catalog. William Steffey’s swansong was the single “Sparkle”,