Snowballs -- growing/shrinking lines

Today's post explores poetic structures called snowballs developed by the Oulipo (see also March 25 posting) and known to many through the writings of Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner (1914-2010).  TIME Magazine's issue for January 10, 1977 had an article entitled "Science:  Perverbs and Snowballs" that celebrated both Gardner and the inventive structures of the Oulipo. Oulipian Harry Mathews' "Liminal Poem" (to the right) is a snowball (growing and then melting) dedicated to Gardner.  The lines in Mathew's poem increase or decrease by one letter from line to line.   Below left, a poem by John Newman illustrates the growth-only snowball.

Harry Mathews
Liminal Poem
for Martin Gardner

     I
     am
     now
     post
     haste
     (sort of)
     posting
     new topic
     to discuss.

     do you enjoy
     constraints?
     does word play
     give headaches?
     are you confused?
     This is a snowball,
     A poetic form which
     was created by those
     who group themselves
     with the name of Oulipo.
     Every line contains one
     Additional letter. U like?

Here, by Harry Mathews, is a 15-line snowball poem in which each line is a single word; notice, also, in each of these poems, the match between the form and its subject.

                I
               am
               the
              text
             which
             begins
            sparely,
           assuming
          magnitude
          constantly,
         perceptibly
        proportional,
       incorporating
      unquestionable
     incrementations.

One also may write syllable-based or word-based snowballs; here are examples--first my own syllable-based growing snowball "Numbers" and then "But" by Dominique Fitzpatrick-O'Dinn (See her Theory of Forms (Spineless Books, 2006).), a poem  in which each succeeding line has one fewer word than the preceding.

     Numbers     by JoAnne Growney

     One
     added
     forever,
     joined by zero,
     paired to opposites—
     these build the integers,
     base for construction of more
     new numbers from old: ratios,
     radical roots and transcendentals,
     transfinite cardinals—conceptions bold!

    But     by Dominique Fitzpatrick-O'Dinn

    And I wanted to tell her my dream that she would be satisfied with me
     that the importance she ascribed to having an actively nonmonogamous sexual life would fade
     that in my mind she would find a community as diverse as any
     in my hands would be revealed a language of new gestures
     in my eyes were swimming visions sufficient to orient a superlative future
     in my face were unfamiliar expressions waiting to emerge
     in my voice were the murmurs of many
     in my ears were a thousand songs
     in my feet a world map
     that I had been building
     I had been learning
     had been storing
     was ready
     But

Interested readers can learn more of snowballs and their effects in an online article entitled "Snowballs and Other Numerate Acts of Textuality" by David M. Rieder of North Carolina State University.  This page of work by Ian Monk contains several Oulipian works; scroll down to find "Snowballing and Melting."