– press a button and you’ve got a poem! You don’t even have to insert a word.
…and to think, I spent 3 (three) weeks composing and re-working my latest Haiku. I should just create a script and generate a whole Library of nothingness…?:roll:
I wonder if one can actually tell the difference between a script generated piece of poetry and something that actually came from the mind…or shall I say, the heart.
honestly, i think some poetry is so contrived that it reads like a script generated piece (if i really understand what that is). so i can’t always tell the difference.
This is false. The recipe for creating a poem was famous long before the 1950’s. As part of the “Manifest about weak love and bitter love”, this methos was presented by Tristan Tzara in 1920 and it goes like this (in a liberal translation):
[i]To make dadaist poetry
Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Out of a newspaper, choose an article which fits the length that you intend on giving to your poem.
Cut out the article.
Carefully cut off the words that make up the article and pu these words in a small bag.
Slowly shake the bag.
Extract the words one at a time and note them down in the order of their appearance.
Diligently copy them onto a piece of paper.
The poem will resemble you.
And here you are an infinitely original writer, gifted with a charming sensibility, even though, obviously, it will never be comprehended by vulgar people.
[/i]
Tristan Tzara is the initiator of the Dada current in 1916, an avant garde revolutionary movement in the arts, that promoted a playful and constructive nihilism through negation of established categories and norms, applied mainly to art, but also to ethics, etc.
What if, Robert Frost (as an example of a universally esteemed and highly-deco-rated poet) composed all his poems while sitting under an apple tree re-aranging newspaper clippings…Who would know?:-k (e)specially with “themed” poetry and poets…(new section of the Sunday paper, new theme).
