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This poem is taken from PN Review 259, Volume 47 Number 5, May - June 2021.

From In One Letter Oulipo
François Caradec, 25 06 06

If I had the time (but I don’t, which is fortunate too), I would unpack the cartload of proofs necessary to demonstrate that the only poem in the French language reducible to a single letter is A Throw of the Dice by Stéphane Mallarmé, which can be read in its reduced form:

D


I am not going to pursue this Mallarméan wordplay to the point required by the typographer, to conserve the poem’s openness to the infinite of the Book.

*


Michelle Grangaud, 26 06 06

Reduction of a poem to a single letter

alley

L

*


Paul Fournel, 27 06 06

There exists one poem and one poem alone that can be reduced to a single letter. A single possible poem which is the poem and which exhausts all other poems of a similar nature by the fact of its existence alone.

This one letter poem is:

T.


I wrote it for stricly personal reasons, of an emotional nature.

*


Bernard Cerquiglini, 14 07 06
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