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Main » Articles » Poetry Decks

Poetry Decks

Abe Sargent
Posted on February 13, 2017
 Reddit

Hello folks and welcome back to all things casual. Sometimes you are moved by your passions in life. Magic is certainly no exception. And a lot of people will take the Magic intellectual property and turn it on its head. From dressing up as famous Magic characters to evoking them in their art, to having a Magic card decked Christmas tree and more, your passions will show themselves.

One of the basic concepts of Magic I have been looking at for a while is the name of the cards as elements for something else. Way back when, in 2004, I penned an article called Revelations of a Magic Writer wherein I discussed my own upcoming battle with Huntington’s Disease. As part of that article, I wrote a deck to conclude it with the path of my life mapped out via Magic cards. It is to be read in order. Here it is:

Sorrow?s Path ? Poetry Deck | Abe Sargent

There you are. This decklist, to be read sequentially, is the parabola of my life. I am currently in the Betrayal of Flesh or Solemn Simulacrum stage of my life right now, as the HD is about 5-ish years in. Every week I feel like something, small, has shifted and worsened. One of the great blessings of this slow descent is how slow it is, and it is hard to track it. Sort of like the parable of the frog in the water, slowly turning the heat to boil so it doesn’t notice the change, rather than immediately.

I’ve always loved this idea of writing decks as poems. And since we now have thousands and thousands more card names out there, the idea of poetry decks should be easier to run, right?

So here is how a poem deck list works. You create a decklist like normal. But you list in order by the name of the card, rather than by cards that make sense as a functioning decklist.

For example, a normal decklist might look like this:

Random Red Deck ? Casual | Abe Sargent

And there's your decklist. That's a normal and functional decklist. But a poetic one will move past the cards and lands and into something else, but only using the titles of the cards themselves.

That's where a card name like Endbringer, Deceiver of Form or even Unknown Shores can really come in. So here, let me give you an example to kick things off. I've recently enjoyed reading the dream-scape fiction of authors like Lord Dunsany and HP Lovecraft. Let's create a poetic decklist designed to evoke that sense of dreams and wonder and oddity.

Dreamscape ? Poetry Deck | Abe Sargent

So there you are, a sort of poem about falling asleep, what happens, and then waking again. I chose the order intentionally and then took the Dreams cycle from Torment. Note that the deck doesn’t have to be an actual proper deck with lands and at least 60 cards.

So, what else could we do?

We could do something like, say, evoke an existing piece of fiction. How about the first book from The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring?

Fellowship of the Deck ? Poetry Deck | Abe Sargent

And there is another! Now I’ve noticed that each of these decks takes a lot longer to write and build as I scrounge around for the perfect card title. Ah well, once more unto the breach!

And I can keep on going. Other ideas?

How about a story of a night on duty at the local castle, by a watchman?

Keepfall ? Poetry Deck | Abe Sargent

And there you are! The tale of a successful attack by Dragons on people, destroying their Castle, and then the people fighting back and retaking their place.

Now how about something a little more poetical, and a little less structured . . . 

The Greatest Taleteller ? Poetry Deck | Abe Sargent

Do you see it? This poem is meant to evoke the life vs death aspects. The first of each couplet is life, and the latter death. The Greatest Taleteller is the story of our lives.

How about a poem for solving the Bloody Axe Murder of Uncle Istvan?

Murder Most Foul ? Poetry Deck | Abe Sargent

How about another one with less obvious form-age?

This is just meant to evoke one of my peaceful walks through nature

Blissful Redolence ? Poetry Deck | CREATOR, TOURNAMENT

This one is done in a bit of a chiasmus structure, with the first and last echoing each other, and then 2nd and 2nd to last and so forth, heading to the center which is the most important. Sort of like ABCDDCBA in form. But I went ABCDEAAFDCBA and packed the core idea on the outside and repeated in the center as well. In order to make that clearer I changed the number of cards to the left.

We’ve had invasions in Magic history from Phyrexians, Eldrazi, and more. What would a generic sort of invasion look like?

Upset the Balance ? Poetry Deck | Abe Sargent

That was good! How about one more sort of less structured one?

Deathbringer ? Poetry Deck | Abe Sargent

I started this out as like a metal sounding set of Noun-verb-er style of titles. But then as I finished I realized that this would be a really cool list of great names for magical weapons for your next Dungeons and Dragons campaign. The Endbringer magical sword or the Windreaver axe.

And then that’s it! Each of these took a while to write, and I’ve been adding a deck here and there for weeks to write this article. What did you think? If you were to write a poetry deck, how would you do it? Where would you start? Would you do a different form? Want to give some examples? I’d love to hear your take on them!

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TAGS articles, casual, personal, abe sargent, decklist, poetry deck

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