This was a three step process, but I never saved the first step so I've reconstructed it as best I can.... I took my inspiration from a piece of an old poem, and attempted to give it a new life.

The first line is from an old poem ca. 2003. I started out just writing out concrete associations to the color green and the forest, and after a while, a guiding set of rules took shape. At the beginning of each stanza I ask a synaesthetic question. Each line answers with every other sense than the one in the question. The second line of the each stanza becomes the first line two stanzas down. The order of sensory detail within stanzas doesn't repeat. The last line of each five line stanza answers with the subject's proper sense (sight for green in the first stanza).

The first step is my initial ideas for each stanza. At this point I wasn't yet concerened with form.

In the second step converted these stanzas to sapphic form, sometimes breaking the sensory form. This forced me to change my poem around quite a bit, and I also eliminated redundancies.

I broke the sapphic form when I replaced every noun with the seventh noun after it in the American Heritage dictionary - this is an OULIPO formula called "N+7".

Finally, I replaced every other line of my sapphic poem with an "N+7" line. The OULIPO exercise made clear to me what parts of speech I was relying on in my lines.

(below are workshop questions)
I wonder if it would be acceptable to reassert authorial control upon further revision. Should I re-sapphize the OULIPO lines? What are your thoughts on exercises such as "N+7" and "Exquisite Corpse" which eliminate a measure of autonomy in a poem? Is the subject of the poem just tiresome, does the poem have life?