Fibonacci Poetry

Leonardo of Pisa, also known as Leonardo Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician whose name graces the series of numbers called the Fibonacci sequence. And what is that?

Basically, every number in a Fibonacci sequence is the sum of the two numbers before it. So, if you begin your sequence 0, 1, then the math and progression goes....

0+1 = 1 leading to a sequence of 0, 1, 1

1+1 = 2 leading to 0, 1, 1, 2

1+2 = 3 leading to 0, 1, 1, 2, 3

2+3 = 5 leading to 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5

This can continue infinitely. If you're fascinated by math, there's much more detailed information on the numbers and the sequence here, but in terms of Fibonacci poetry, this is more than enough to get you started.

A Fibonacci poem is a poem where the number of syllables in each line tracks the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. So, the first line of the poem has 1 syllable (or 0 for a beat of silence, if you're a purist!), and then is followed by lines of 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 syllables and onward as far as the poet wishes to go. The form is traditionally non-rhyming... but it can rhyme if you want it to.

Poets have written poems starting with higher Fibonacci number syllable lines and "counting backwards" to smaller syllable lines as well as writing up to a certain number of syllables and then reversing, creating a "stacked" poem.

Some people have used the Fibonacci numbers to count words instead of syllables. Others have used it to count sentences instead, though this quickly leads to novel length works. The key in all these forms is that the Fibonacci numbers work as a guideline to the form but not to the contents of the poetry itself.

On April 1, 2006, I put up a post on my blog suggesting that folks spread Fibs -- my name for 6 line, 20 syllable poems based on the Fibonacci sequence -- around the Web to celebrate National Poetry Month. By the end of April, more than 1,000 Fibs had been written in the comments of my blog alone, Fibs had hit the New York Times, and threads of Fibs were sprouting up all around. I write lots of different types of poetry, but I'll always have a sweet spot for Fibs... and I'm still writing them all the time.

A Fib is 6 lines long and only has 20 syllables. Here's how the syllables per line look:

1
1
2
3
5
8

Here's an example of my own:

One
Small,
Precise,
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.

I try not to use words like "the" or "a" in the one syllable lines, and I mention some other guidelines in this post on my blog. I use Fibs as a "warm up" exercise for my writing day, and it really does help me focus on word choice and clarity (and brevity!). But whether you're writing Fibs or another type of Fibonacci poem or any poetry at all and for whatever reason, the most important thing is to write!