Thanks for your reading of this generator, too. You’ve mentioned several of the issues I was hoping to open up. And you’ve got me thinking about ways that source code (independent of the text or other data that it includes, and independent of how it functions) could itself be gendered.

Jim, thanks for your comments on ppg256-4, too. I agree that reading several poems, or reading them for a while as the generator runs, is the best way to encounter the text. (Of course, I hope the code will be encountered by gallery visitors, too.) I’m not aiming to publish any particular outputs in literary magazines or to have individual poems presented as interesting texts in their own right: It’s really the voice and texture that interest me. If I keep working at it, that could perhaps make for a nice adjunct to or replacement for a bedside alarm clock!

This is interesting in relation to Jason’s question about computational poetics. It’s damn clever, yes, and it demands a certain cleverness, or at least knowledge and a knack for deciphering, on the part of the reader too. I suppose the danger is if such work becomes so esoteric that very few readers can even get in, let alone ‘crack the code’. Also, how does a reader know it’ll be worth the effort unless there’s a good hook to seduce them, to pull them in. This, I think, ‘A Tiny Poetry Generator…’ does very successfully.

i posted not long ago on longestpoemintheworld.com. this is quite an interesting piece but the artist isn’t a poet and doesn’t see the piece itself as art. i would say it’s a terrific code idea implemented quite well.

typically, in the sort of work we do, there are various arts, techs, cultures and so on involved. and usually there’s more weight on some of them than others.

projects like nick’s interest me. i don’t immediately think of theodore roetke’s poetry. i mean the language is, you know, way different, the concept of poetry is quite different. and i like the breathing room it creates. the lines themselves, also, in this piece, they’re something you’d want to read several of to figure out what this bot is smoking.

the literary mind knows derrida, aristotle, heraclitus, and many other literary and philosophical writers of poetics. but these days it’s also good for the literary mind to have a sense of turing, church, chomsky, and the way that the theory of computation approaches language.

This is a really lovely and damn clever use of computational poetics. And yet I must admit I’m not a fan of computational poetics in general.

So here’s the trick.

While the tech side of my brain loves these code driven poetry/letter/made up word generator, the poet side of me is always a bit “eh”.

What I mean to say is, conceptually driven projects like these are fascinating, and to the “code is poetry” agenda, well this fits damn nicely. But after that…?

What do others think? Not so much about Nick’s work here….because I really enjoy his mix of the physical and the generative text…..but about computational poetics projects in general? And if the term “computational poetics” is the wrong one to use in others eyes….then insert your own “term” and reply.

cheers, Jason