compression drills
A comprehensive guidebook of 73 poetry writing exercises designed to teach compression—the art of making every word essential. This resource moves beyond basic minimalism to explore how language can work multiply: when syntax performs multiple functions, when single images hold multiple emotional registers, and when form itself enacts meaning.
The drills escalate in difficulty and employ diverse constraint-based approaches including:
Formal constraints (syllabic reduction, Fibonacci patterns, sonnets that shrink)
Lexical restrictions (monosyllables only, no adjectives/adverbs, lipograms)
Sonic experiments (homophones, consonant clusters, monorhymes)
Procedural methods (reverse chronology, ablation, erasure)
Temporal manipulations (expanding moments, time-lapse structures)
Source-based techniques (documentary compression, found forms, collage)
Each drill includes the constraint type, expected number of drafts, detailed instructions, and example opening lines. The exercises address compression through physical sensation (pressure, reduction, condensing), syntactic architecture (enjambment, caesura, periodic sentences), and conceptual frameworks (absence, implication, withholding).
Rather than teaching generation, these drills teach ruthless selection—learning what to keep when everything else burns away. The document emphasizes that compression isn't brevity but density: fitting multiple meanings, temporalities, and emotional registers into tightly constructed formal spaces.
A comprehensive guidebook of 73 poetry writing exercises designed to teach compression—the art of making every word essential. This resource moves beyond basic minimalism to explore how language can work multiply: when syntax performs multiple functions, when single images hold multiple emotional registers, and when form itself enacts meaning.
The drills escalate in difficulty and employ diverse constraint-based approaches including:
Formal constraints (syllabic reduction, Fibonacci patterns, sonnets that shrink)
Lexical restrictions (monosyllables only, no adjectives/adverbs, lipograms)
Sonic experiments (homophones, consonant clusters, monorhymes)
Procedural methods (reverse chronology, ablation, erasure)
Temporal manipulations (expanding moments, time-lapse structures)
Source-based techniques (documentary compression, found forms, collage)
Each drill includes the constraint type, expected number of drafts, detailed instructions, and example opening lines. The exercises address compression through physical sensation (pressure, reduction, condensing), syntactic architecture (enjambment, caesura, periodic sentences), and conceptual frameworks (absence, implication, withholding).
Rather than teaching generation, these drills teach ruthless selection—learning what to keep when everything else burns away. The document emphasizes that compression isn't brevity but density: fitting multiple meanings, temporalities, and emotional registers into tightly constructed formal spaces.