Friday, April 03, 2015

Bones of Bashan

Third in the PoMoSco series. The source is Psalm 22, as rendered in the New Zealand Prayer Book.

The guidelines were to select words and phrases by a means of rolling dice. I had done a similar poem using the I Ching. The editor-in-chief of the PoMoSco project gave me permission to use the I Ching for this project as well.

The I Ching didn't give as much variety as I had hoped, and using a method similar to what I did for A Loveless Marriage (linked above) would have been too time-consuming, so I also applied an on-line dice rolling site — using six twelve sided dice. Each die would determine which line I would select; the line of the trigram would determine whether I would select the first half or second half of the line. I think the end product is rather interesting.

This poem also marks the third in my personal “Holy Week” series. The PoMoSco Handbook has a suggested calendar, but I respond to do this prompt out of order. “Roll the Dice” immediately made me think of a line from Ps 22: “they cast lots for my clothing”. “Casting lots” is similar to rolling dice. A connection!

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