Mailvox: Poetry and the game player

JB writes, floridly:

All hail your economic eminence. Your mastery of the abstruse and arcane is appreciable to me only by the accuracy of your predictions. Inspired by you and others to take both videogames and poetry seriously, I have written a poem on Dragon Age: Origins. I doubt it will be of interest to someone who hasn’t played the game.

The question that occasions this email is, by what method do you write your poetry? This is the first time I have managed to create passable meter. Here was my method:

1. Brainstorm the emotional units of meaning
2. Structure rhyming couplets and quatrains
3. Reorder the couplets and quatrains
4. Fix meter problems
5. Fix diction problems

However I don’t think the above method could create poetry with an ABAB rhyming structure, which I’ve seen you use. Do you have any tips? Also, what are you playing lately?

Fascinating. If I were the Sports Guy, JB’s email would definitely close the mailbag. I don’t have a poetic method per se, I simply write it with the rhymes in the right place and hope the syllables and meter are correct. I guess my only tip would be to buy a good rhyming dictionary; the online ones tend to be limited in scope. In answer to his other question, I’m finally on the verge of finishing Fantasy General, I’m playing CoD:MW2 on both the PC and PS/3, I’ve got Mario Kart hooked up on the exercise bike, and I find myself unexpectedly on the verge of being defeated in ASL scenario S2 War of the Rats.