Wait, what is a lipogram, anyway? A rare and terrible medical condition? A sinister new form of AI-infused electronic communication? A secret, environmentally friendly naval weapon powered by sea salt and plastic recycled from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? A flying saucer cleverly disguised as a terrestrial bird bath?
"Man with Bird Bath #1" - Photo by Si Dunn
Nah. A lipogram is simply a form of writing in which a certain letter is deliberately avoided or deliberately chosen. For example, the letter "e" does not appear in any of the words in the poetic ditty below. Yet every word does contain the letter "a."
LIPOGRAM: ALARM!
Mad aardvarks
plan dark attacks
at parks. Hark!
Alarm all ants!
– Si Dunn
(02/20/2026)
Many poets write lipograms, but they mostly have to do it for fun. Virtually all literary magazines on Planet Earth avoid lipograms. Poets very rarely can get one--or even a collection of several lipograms--published anywhere except in a self-published book or a blog post seen by maybe ten people around the globe. And the notion that you might get paid anything at all for your time, effort, and talent virtually never computes in Lipogram Land.
About the best thing anyone can do for writers who dare to pen and post lipograms is...well, chuckle maybe, take pity, buy them a coffee or a biscuit/cookie, and give creating a lipogram a try yourself. They are not that easy to complete.
Believe it or not, several noteworthy novels have been written entirely as lipograms. Imagine trying to tell a coherent story while avoiding all words that contain the letter "z" or "c" or "q." To see some examples, web-search the term "novels written as lipograms." A few of the books are considered genuine literary achievements, unlike their squat little quarter-page, space-filler cousins.
This brings up a related point. Could a great screenplay be written as an extended lipogram?
Given the not-so-stellar quality of dialogue currently unleashed by characters on America's movie screens, a lipogram script would be a genuine challenge, especially if the screenwriters must avoid the letter "f." For example, imagine Ben Affleck and Matt Damon dodging Tinseltown bullets, shooting back, swinging fists, kicking, and grunting "Uck!...Uck!...Uck!" as they take out the bad guys, who are also yelling the equivalent of "Uck! Uck! Uck!" in Arabic, Persian, Russian, Chinese, and/or U.S. border Spanish while they fire...oops...ire...ire...ire their automatic weapons.
Hollywood, I think I will pass on that "f"-ing challenge.
-- Si Dunn
Si Dunn is a writer, photographer, poet, book reviewer, and occasional pencil sharpener in Franklin, Mass. Email: [email protected]
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