Saturday, January 28, 2006

The "Cadaeic Cadenza": A Work of Genius

I was browsing through Wikipedia, trying to teach myself something new, and came across an article on "Constrained Writing". Basically, in this form of writing, the writer constrains himself (herself) by various means and rules, such as:

  • the usage of acrostics
  • the prohibition of certain letters (such as e), known, engagingly enough, as lipograms
  • the usage of certain letters in every word (reverse lipograms)
There are various such rules; however, the one work of sheer genius that I came across is the Cadaeic Cadenza, by Mike Keith. It's available online right here: The Cadaeic Cadenza. For a hint as to what it contains, look at the first word "Cadaeic", and try and get the pattern.

Moments such as this are what life is for!


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As of 10/31/2008, aol has shutdown *aol hometown*, and consequently the *Cadaeic Cadenza* is no longer available online.

For shame, aol.

==j

Anonymous said...

Thanks to Google's incessant need to continuously cache the net, you can find the Cadaeic Cadenza here:

Cadaeic Cadenza

Anonymous said...

"Cadaeic Cadenza" now has a new home, on www.cadaeic.net.