Saturday, December 12, 2009

Announcing the Betty Blog

Recently I completed a 1,500-line poem, "Betty." The purpose of this blog is to archive the entire piece on the web. Later it will carry news about the poem, if any.

I wrote the first draft of "Betty" on Nov. 24, as an 11-line spoof of someone else's "poem." A third poet replied, with a 70-line version; and things snowballed from there. The final version, comprising 1,528 lines, was completed Dec. 12.

While writing "Betty," I also completed "Betty's Appendix." The appendix gives the hexadecimal values for (most of) the more than 3,000 colours mentioned in the poem.

Since I doubt there will be many readers at the beginning, I will be posting the entire poem and appendix in reverse order, starting with the last part of the Appendix and ending with stanza 1 of the poem. That may make things a bit confusing for those reading it as it's being posted, but it will make it easier to read for anyone coming to it after the fact.

So, without further ado, let me post the first (actually the final) installment of "Betty's Appendix". Further posts will follow each day until early January.

Update, April 11, 2011: Because someone claims that the use of the name "Betty" in a poem infringes his copyright, the name of the poem was changed to "Penny (or Penny's Hat)", the name of the appendix to "Penny's Appendix", and the name of the blog to "Penny's Poetry Blog" or maybe just "The Penny Blog". I haven't decided which as of this date. 

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