R	A	F	T
O	V	E	R
S	I	N	E
E	D	D	Y

I envy a desert ford:
it fed a dry nerve so
I'd vend a free story:
a very fiend strode,
sent a very odd fire,
every stride a fond
vent of a dry desire.
I'd end a soft revery,
do, very deft, a Siren.
I'd defy a torn verse.
doesn't a river defy
a very Eden? drift so:
soften a river eddy.
I dry a fervent dose.

W	A	V	E
O	B	I	T
M	O	O	R
B	A	L	E

I owe, to a verbal mob,
a Babel movie or two
above a limbo tower
or below a movie bat.
I've a bramble to woo,
a bamboo tower, live
owl tier above a mob,
brow to a limbo eave.
move a wit, able boor,
rove a loom, bait a web:
we roil above a tomb;
we brim a love taboo.
be a boa, violet worm:
I leave a bomb or two.

Note on Isotopes:

Any 4x4 wordsquare entails an indeterminate number of ISOTOPES [poems, usually of 14 lines, each line using each letter of the wordsquare once]. In constructing the wordsquare, however much one might strive for a fortuitous tessellation of signifieds, the orthographically gratuitous intersection of signifiers constrains the alchemist. Having unearthed the ore-square, I send its letters for refining to Anu Garg's Internet Anagram Server, at http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html --which almost immediately returns ~most~ of the hundreds (or thousands) of pages of lines potential in the square [this site doesn't return plurals, so the writer must borrow from other words, & must usually imagine the words in each line deployed in several possible sequences]. Each Rubiking together of a poem derived from the same wordsquare and signable by the temerity of its architexteologist constitutes an Isotope of that square. The form invites the exploration of any wordsquare by any poet, and envisions atlases of any wordsquare's "undiscovered countries" and "newer worlds."

Pub. March 2000

DRC