[New-Poetry] Magic Spells (word squares)

[Skip Fox]

Come to think of it, I believe I saw sources while I was looking at origins
for concrete poetry, but books on alphabet puzzles, Latin verse, magic
words. etc. should have a lot. A more common term is "word square," the
secondary type of acrostic. 

 

Perhaps here's what I saw:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_square

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Suzanne Burns
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:21 AM
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp,Views
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Magic Spells (word squares)

 

Whoooooooaaaah!

I want to dig up more of these!  I see a calligraphy project.  Any sources?

Thanks!

Suzanne





On 3/12/07, Skip Fox <skip at louisiana.edu> wrote:

Have you ever tried this? Here's a beautiful one from mid-19th cent.: 

CIRCLE
ICARUS
RAREST
CREATE
LUSTER
ESTEEM

I've not done any with six letters, but here's a 5-letter spell that erases
itself:

ERASE
RARER
ARENA
SENDS
ERASE

(erase around all sides)

Some groupings are rather interesting:

mind
idea
nest
data

Story goes that many of these were done in Latin with religious
terms/ideas/elements and used by Romans and others for luck and fortune by 
placing the "spell" 9n a notable place like outside their front gate.

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