Vocabularyclept poem
# Vocabularyclept poem

A vocabularyclept poem is a poem which is formed by taking the words of an existing poem and rearranging them into a new work of literature.

## History

Vocabularyclept poetry was first proposed in 1969 by Word Ways editor Howard Bergerson. He took his little-known 1944 poem "Winter Retrospect", put all the words in alphabetical order, and challenged readers to arrange them all into a new poem. The challenge was taken up later that year by J. A. Lindon, who, without having consulted Bergerson's original, produced an entirely different poem also titled "Winter Retrospect". Both poems are 24 lines long and contain 478 words, and have been subject to several literary and statistical analyses.

Extract from J. A. Lindon's version:

    Night sends me this whirl of snow.
    Under the low trees the watery glow
    Of your lamp looking through the dusk—my
    Thoughts are still that it must die.
    Upon these walls the snow is driving.
    Grow with the wind's lonely music, my soul, riving
    Bland aspirations split with the blast up in the eaves,
    And I shall remember only that the mind, though failing, weaves
    Tinsel in darkness, memory a kaleidoscope, floss
    That soundless flies, musk rose, and all that nearly was,

Many vocabularyclept poems by Lindon and others appeared in later issues of Word Ways. These and others are collected and discussed in various wordplay books by Bergerson and David Morice.

A variation on the idea of rearranging an existing vocabulary into a poem was independently discovered by Dave Kapell. His Magnetic Poetry kits consist of individual words—often related to a particular theme or topic—printed on small magnets which can be creatively arranged on a refrigerator or other metal surface.

