Words of one beat

Here's a fun game: Write posts in words of just one beat. It's hard at first, but once you catch the way of it, soon you can spin it out like a stream flows on and on. Well, yeah, sure, streams don't have to stop for food or sleep, but you can still go as long as you want. Or till you try to count -- it's danged hard to count past ten.

The best play is take a bit of verse or prose that's in bad words you can't read,* and put it in good words. If you're good at this, you can make your verse still rhyme; if you're way good, you can keep the beats of the line; if you catch the sound, the sweep, the tune, of the old verse -- well, I bow down in awe, Dude. Here's a stab at what I mean:

( 'To His Coy Miss' )

As you can see, names are hard, too. We used to play this game on an old board, long since dead. I've got a page of works in words of one beat and an Oft Asked Things that gives the rules in more depth (with notes on such words as "power"). If you want to play, feel free to post here (and let me know if you want me to add it to the page). Or if you think folks would take part, we could start a group L.J. to play in.

* The way we played it, if you used a word with two or more beats, we could not "see" the word -- it was a hole on screen, as it were.

E.T.A.: I note that there is a wordsofonebeat group L.J. now. Needs some work to make it look nice, but I'll get to that in a bit.

---L.