Trypto

One more poetry reference for April.

Trypto is a game by David Parlett.

Take a short poem or stanza (or piece of a song) that is unfamiliar. (He suggests about 30 words.) Make a list of all the words. (If you're clever with word processors you can do a global replace of all the spaces with carriage returns to make a list.) He suggests alphabetizing. It might be more fun to cut the words up so you can shuffle them around easily. Then each person tries to recreate the poem. (Or make up an even better one!)

Here's one that he used as an example:

all
and
bars
girls
going
hat
home
hung
I
I
I
in
loved
my
stars
the
the
the
upon
was
when
young

The original is below:

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

I loved when I was young
The girls in all the bars,
And going home I hung
My hat upon the stars.

-- Victor J Daly