I am not a formal person. I rarely brush my hair, rarely make the bed. I don’t like being boxed in to tetrameter, into a three-act structure, in my own work. I’m a huge fan of found forms, though — I love finding existing shapes in nature, in culture, and wrapping words around them. (My book Fruitflesh is structured around the growing cycle; my Dictionary Poems collection found its form in Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate). I love when other writers blow the dust off old, often taken-for-granted, structures and make something new. Here are a few examples.

• In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters by Diane Schoemperlen
Schoemperlen employs the 100 stimulus words from the Standard Word Association Test as the framework for her wonderfully associative novel.

• Yoga Poems by Leza Lowitz
Lowitz borrows the forms of yoga, patterning each poem in the book after a particular pose or practice.

• The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
Levi, a former chemist, uses the structure of the periodic table of elements as a jumping off place for this collection of stories (both fictional and factual).

• The Body in Four Parts by Janet Kauffman
Kauffman calls upon the four elements — water, earth, fire and air — to name the four sections of this book.

• A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
Ackerman divides her book (one of my favorites) into the five senses, then draws them all together for the final section, Synesthesia.

• The Hanged Man by Francesca Lia Block
The Tarot deck provides a pathway for Block’s powerful young adult novel.

• Summerland by Michael Chabon
Chabon’s magical baseball tale is divided into Bases (and, of course, ends up at Home).

• Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
Abish uses the alphabet — that primal backbone — to structure his novel. All the words in the first chapter begin with A, all the words in the second chapter begin with A or B, and so on, all the way up to Z. Then, in the following 26 chapters, the same process happens in reverse; the final chapter, like the first, is composed of words that all start with A.