Fibonacci poems multiply on the Web

Blogs
spread
gossip
and rumor
But how about a
Rare, geeky form of poetry?

That's exactly what happened after Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children's book author in Los Angeles, wrote a post on his GottaBook blog several weeks ago inviting readers to write "Fibs," six-line poems that used a mathematical progression known as the Fibonacci sequence to dictate the number of syllables in each line. (Number of syllables in line: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...)

Within a few days, Pincus, 41, had received about 30 responses, a large portion of them Fibonacci poems. Most of them were from friends or relatives or people who regularly read his blog, which focuses on children's literature.

Then, on April 7, a subscriber to the popular Web site Slashdot.org--which runs over a tagline that reads "News for nerds. Stuff that matters"--linked to Pincus' original post, and suddenly, it seemed, Fibs were sprouting all over the Internet.

The allure of the form is that it is simple, yet restricted. The number of syllables in each line must equal the sum of the syllables in the two previous lines. So, start with 0 and 1, add them together to get your next number, which is also 1; 2 comes next; then add 2 and 1 to get 3; and so on. Pincus structured the Fibs to top out at line six, with eight syllables.

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