Editor's Note

Welcome to Issue #6 of the Fib Review. Last year we published two online journals and we're well on our way to three this year. As editor, my role is to promote the Fibonacci poem as a recognizable and respected poetic form. In the past few years since the Fibonacci poem was popularized in Greg Pincus's GottaBook blog, poets from all over the world have taken the Fibonacci form and have poured their poetic heart and creative minds into variations of the form. Issue # 3 was considered the experimental issue, but the experiments haven't stopped there. Both in voice and imagery, the use of metaphor, the painting a portrait, and the delving into the core of human nature, these poems have come a long way from the limited six-line poem about a numeric sequence.

Give a poet a poetic form, and they will find a way to experiment. During the 19th and 20th Centuries poets like Guillaume Apollinaire, e.e.cummings, and Dylan Thomas experimented with the shapes and patterns of their poems, so that the visual spoke as much to the reader as did the words of the poem. In this issue poets like Mark Arvid White push the Fibonacci form to new levels. In Issue # 5, his poem "Mirrored" is three poems in one. Each side of the poem is a separate poem, but if read across, it becomes yet a third poem. He continues this idea in this current issue with his poem "Horns (a Split-Fib)". The poem itself is in the shape of a bull's head and reads as three poems. Wolfiewolfgang chooses to use the diamond shape rather than the traditional left justified. to express his poems.

It is for reasons like these that the Fib Review will be a journal where poets can express themselves in one particular poetic form. As the Fibonacci form continues to grow in its complexities and poets continue to push the limits of form, shape and poetic voice, the Fib Review is somewhere they can always call home.

Mary-Jane Grandinetti

What is a Fib?

The Fibonacci poem is a 6-line short poetry form that is based on the structure of the Fibonacci sequence. For those unfamiliar with the Fibonacci Sequence, it is a mathematical sequence in which every figure is the sum of the two preceding it. Thus, you begin with 1 and the sequence follows as such: 1+1=2; then in turn 1+2=3; then 2+3=5; then 3+5=8 and so on. The poetry sequence therefore consists of six lines of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8, with each number representing the number of syllables that a writer places in each line of the poem. Initially poems were written with 6 lines, but now many poets experiment with poems that go well into higher digits, or with poems that are in reversed sequence. As a literary device, it is used as a formatted pattern in which one can offer meaning in any organized way, providing the number sequence remains the constancy of the form.

The subject of the Fibonacci poem has no restriction, but the difference between a good fib and a great fib is the poetic element that speaks to the reader. No longer just a fun form to write as a math student, the poets who write good Fibonacci poems have replaced the 'geek' with the poet.

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