The Preconception of Dementias is a poetic riddle intended to teach a moral lesson concerning inspiration, originating in The Spine of Hives. The form guides poets during improvised performances. The poem is a single tercet. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines use the same placement of allusions. Each line has seven syllables. The third line of the tercet has the same grammatical structure as the first line. The rhyme scheme of the poem is AAB.