World’s Longest Poem Attempt Becomes World’s Largest Choka

— 1,000 Couplets and Counting —

Choka is a form of Japanese poetry, related to (but pre-dating) haiku, with an alternating 5-7 syllabic structure and a non-defined length. Only a month ago, b1-66er and the birdhead had the idea to make a Web site enabling literally anyone who could count syllables and speak English to tack on their own couplets to this (now immortal) phrase opening:

Oh great Internet
Home to world's information
I have learned so much

Polterzeitgeist Productions is proud to announce that “Choka On It” has just become the World’s Largest Choka(tm) — smashing all previous records, topping 1,200 couplets, and climbing. Birdhead, the programming genius behind the project put it this way, “It’s fun and surprisingly addictive. There’s definitely a community building and it’s great to watch. The choka makes me laugh every day.”

B1-66er points out that the choka is averaging more than 1.4 couplets an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. “There are maniacs out there. People that seem to almost have some weird poetic form of Tourette’s. Our most prolific poets, Frank Zappai and awgeez, for example, have had weekends of posting over 200 couplets.” When asked if most of what’s being posted is the equivalent of poetic trash, b1 smiles and says, “It depends on what your definition of ‘trash’ is.”

There’s also poignancy. Chicagoan suttonhoo has posted such gems as:

Web's fine filament; are we
predator or prey?

B1-67er has proffered the computer-innuendo filled:

Spiders crawl hidden corners
Trivia is dead


— Big Baby Gets New Home http://www.chokaonit.com —

The birdhead says, “I was worried that we were going to make Blogger puke, so we moved the site.” To celebrate what is now the World’s Largest Choka, the entire site has been moved from bigpoem.blogspot.com to www.chokaonit.com and run under the control of TypePad. The birdhead chirps, “It’s running flawlessly.”

The public are openly encouraged to contribute. No registration, not even an email address, is necessary. B1-66er sums it up, “This is the easiest shot the average citizen will ever have to be a part of history. What’s stopping you?”