Yet More Alice

Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland continues to serve as an excellent source material for Poesytron.

Closer moved, washing

Mabel with Dinah, house snot

within-- different

One opening boy

sent laid along, caused kindly

Quick feelings, fat knock

win wags larger fat

stupidly advisable

buttercup showing

Where the Sidewalk Ends Haiku

Here are some more haiku drawn from Shel Silverstein's poem "Where the Sidewalk Ends."

They-- the there wind blows,

slow pace the winds, winds-- And with

the walk place measured.

The rests bends, rests walks

asphalt pits. The sidewalk and

children where we walk.

Mostly, though, selecting based on word frequency gives me a lot of 'and', 'to', and 'for' in the haiku.  Especially 'and':

and And flowers where

Let sidewalk is sidewalk And

For peppermint to

chalk-white place And and

there the To slow the And grows

soft The us For the

I was hoping that incorporating word frequency would give me something slightly better than just including random words, by somehow sticking a little bit "truer" to the text, but it clearly comes with its own set of drawbacks.

Poesytron Celebrates St. Patrick's Day

In the spirit of green and orange, I selected the lyrics of the song "Rocky Road to Dublin" as a read-through text.  Here's the song:

And here are the Irish-themed haiku:

smother, got dogs stroll

"Would Liverpool stand, joined off,"

Galway mother says

Brogues mind thought could tired,

mother pint, at said rocky,

Connacht safely down

Got stick rigs, funny,

goblin loud as merry there,

daylight shellaillagh.

Bubblin' round month jigs,

keep failing morning 'til do,

whack-fol-la-de-da!

Alice in Wonderland Haiku II

Here are some more random-word haiku drawn from the source text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll:

Squeaking, write pattern.

Begun tails planning, pulled so.

Taller chorus near

Sighed, ornamented,

crown shutting shriek, tongue pleased, its

brush trembling, your won.

Brave, contemptuous.

Pencils, evening pleased squeezed hell.

Furiously scale.

Alice in Wonderland Haiku

I chose Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll specifically as the first text for Poesytron to "read-through." Because there are so many nonsensical elements in the novel, and Poesytron often produces nonsense, it seemed like a perfect fit.  Also, Alice is in the public domain, so the text is available for free on Project Gutenberg.

Raised difficulty--

butter leaves presents fighting.

Music wouldn’t save.

Footmen followed, used
longway, wondered aloud. Learn

ancient, belong rapped.

Nose minded driest.

Breath velvet leaning ledge state.

Impatiently leave.

Poems through Poems

With computer poetry, the output is always constrained by the input.  The haiku written by Poesytron is limited by the material I've given it to work with.  First, I gave it almost complete free rein: words were selected entirely at random from the Moby hyphenation lexicon.  Then I constrained it to words from a sample of 500 haiku, with some rules on selecting words based on them appearing in the same haiku together.

I have ideas for expanding the sample, and also creating better rules for word selection.  But before I get into those, I want to explore some other ways of applying constraints--by drawing inputs from a particular text.

For example, I can tell Poesytron to create a random-word haiku, but only using words found in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland:

Tea-time rate removed

Tis putting side sign shyly

lives ever sand tongue

But I could also put constraints on word choice based on how frequently a word appears in a text.  This is easiest to do with something much shorter than a novel; say, Shel Silverstein's poem "Where the Sidewalk Ends":

sidewalk asphalt wind.

Cool grows with grass-- go There slow,

where in, and sun, the

The difference is subtle, but present.

Experimental poets often play with different constraints like these.  I've mentioned Jackson Mac Low, a poet who played with "non-intentional" methods, before, but he had one specific method that drew on other texts in a similar way.  He called it a "diastic" method, and he would read through a source text and replace each single word with several words from another text (the seed text), selecting words in order that had matching letters in certain places.

There's also a group of poets who create "potential literature" through many different methods of constraint.  They're called OuLiPo, and it's mainly a French-speaking group of writers and mathematicians.  (Their website is here; it's in French but Google can translate it, for however much that is worth.)  One of their many methods is called Chimera, and it involves taking one text, replacing all of the nouns with nouns from a second text, all of the verbs with verbs from a third text, and all of the adjectives with adjectives from a fourth text.

I'm intrigued by all of these different methods to "read through" something.  It reminds me of the statistical technique of resampling, which allows a scientist to get a much better understanding of her data by selecting and rearranging the original dataset.  I think these methods of resampling a book or poem--of rearranging, reselecting, and restructuring--can not only create new poems, but can possibly even present new ways of looking at the original text.

Reader Submissions: Quick Smolder Tango

Last week, I issued a challenge:

Send me your illustrations of your favorite Poesytron haiku!  (Or in adaptation made in any media, really.)  Even if it's a sketch made in three minutes in MS Paint, it is still going to far surpass whatever I could do, so I want to see it.

FireHair aka Jared took my instructions quite literally, and constructed this masterpiece in Paint:

quick smolder tango
satin as shapes passing a
from away, paint waves

Spectacular!  Now that's what I call smoldering!


Now don't you have something to send to me?

The Face of Computer Poetry

No, not the cat's face...

Posing with Fluffy is the computer that I wrote the code for Poesytron 575 on, and the computer that has generated almost all of the resulting poems.

I wanted to put up a picture of it to show how ordinary it is.  It's a plain little netbook, going on two years old, which means it's beginning to show its age a little and get some quirks (ie, never restarting properly, and fun things like that).

On the screen, the computer has just finished running, and is displaying the haiku:

utterly am well

a the foam curved her the wind

land swaying a she

It takes a couple of minutes for my little netbook to process each haiku.  Of course, on a computer with some actual processing speed, like my work computer, each haiku is generated near-instantaneously.

Seasonally-Appropriate Haiku for March 10

Despite what I said yesterday, Poesytron has in fact had some compositions about spring:

Wanted: red captured

in the still five Paris day.

Today, the crane’s spring.

Point round them: names in

no tiny spring.  On with rain!

Many, his yet boots.

Sunflowers the spring.

Anyone without, in where

prairie memories.

Even though I know how Poesytron works, even though I know that random chance and the way the human brain works means I'm going to find something to draw connections between, I am still utterly amazed when I see such coherence in Poesytron's selections.   The second one above has rain in the second line and boots in the third, which not only go so well together but are also paired with spring.  And the third one has sunflowers and prairie in the first and last lines, respectively.  There is meaning in the madness!

Poesytron Does Not Know What Season It Is

It's March, and the snow in Connecticut is finally melting.  So I was sitting here thinking, "I've done a couple of weather-themed posts, perhaps the next post could be spring-themed."

And what was the very next haiku that Poesytron spit out?

This:

From is established.

A is black, new snow eyes, the

autumn, taste hips of--

Clearly Poesytron is a little confused.  Here are a couple of other fall haiku Poesytron has written:

Guessing pregnancy:

my another fallen leaves.

The grave, hair, cruel.

Mirroring, they as

pelts for menopause. Of in

eyes, rings autumn tear.

Haiku for March 8: Winds

Here are a few haiku that Poesytron has written that contain something about wind:

cricket, with finding,

with the winds-- crab surfaces--

a free to tide the

connecting rubs minds,

rubs minds out, affairs from my

wind, spray to and of

scent a, the for-- my

ridges, weightless pen, end a

wind, clearer under

Forecast faster wind,

bones pierces bones of swallow,

swallowtail on round.

Aftershave Stairs

I want to linger a bit longer on one of the haiku I posted yesterday:

Dress

     Mom to

           In our

Aftershave stairs

            Heat darkens

Lingering sun

         Low

As I've explained before, Poesytron picks each new word by randomly picking a word from a randomly picked haiku in the database that contains the previously selected word (even if it couldn't make the previously selected word fit into the count).

So when the first word is "dress," Poesytron finds a haiku out of the 500 in the database (so far), and in this case it must have chosen this haiku by Laurie MacFayden:

Mom says wear a dress

My brothers get to wear jeans

Who made this dumb rule?

And Poesytron randomly picks out "mom" for the next word, and then repeats the process.

So when it gets to "aftershave," there is only one haiku to pick from, and it is this one, by Jocelyne Verret:

Your aftershave climbs

the stairs ahead of your steps

I inhale pleasure

Now what I find really interesting here is that everything Verret has said in a dozen words can be conveyed in just the two words that Poesytron picked out: "aftershave stairs."  The people referenced may be different, but the exact same scene is being conveyed.

There's something going on here, and that something is juxtaposition.  I'm reading a book right now called Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer Poetry, and the author, Charles Hartman, talks about juxtaposition at length.  Jumping from one detail to the next without transition is one of the fundamentals of poetry--especially in haiku, where the structure doesn't permit the space to fill in the gaps.  Hartman says, "Juxtaposition makes the reader an accomplice in the poem, forging the links of meaning.  In the process we supply a lot of energy, and that involves us in the poem."

So in Poesytron's haiku above, it is really me (and you), the reader, filling in the scene around the words.  On a post a few days ago, FireHair left a comment that said, "we don't read words so much as habitual relationship between words."

When I read poems written by humans, I am not aware so much that I'm an accomplice in the poem, or that I'm reading habitual relationships between words rather than the words themselves.  But when I read Poesytron's poems, I'm conscious of the active role I have to take--even though I suspect that I'm not doing any more than when I read "real" poetry, and maybe even any text.

Of course there is a balance here, and I'm not sure exactly where the tipping point is.  Sometimes Poesytron gives me "aftershave stairs," or "quick smolder tango," but sometimes it gives me "raindrop a the his we're we."  I don't have a framework that I can fill in the gaps in that one--so it becomes nonsense to me.   But it's not that Poesytron wrote something nonsensical; it's that words "get their meaning from their relations to other words" (Hartman), and the relational structure of the words in that line, inside my brain, doesn't have enough support beams for me to stand on.

Language is a funny, funny thing.

Haiku for March 6: Skies and suns

Prints, and party where

nowhere, endless nowhere sky,

return

                 returning

I love trying to picture what a "nowhere sky" looks like.

Desert sunset stretches,

standing leg eyed for to room

couple home a the

My favorite phrase in this one is "standing leg-eyed."  (I don't know what it means, though.)

birthday from water

of sky beginnings to kill

an graves and match first

Earlier we had "nowhere sky;" now we have "sky beginnings."  Is sky just one of those words that sounds beautiful and profound no matter what you pair with it?  (Challenge: put this to the test...)

Dress

     Mom to

           In our

Aftershave stairs

            Heat darkens

Lingering sun

         Low

I took some liberties with the spacing of this one.  This one creates a very clear picture for me: a mother getting ready for an evening date; the aftershave of the father or boyfriend lingering on the stairs.  This is another example where I'm amazed that all the fragments come together so well: the dress, the lingering sun hanging low, the stairs.

One Haiku, and a Challenge, for March 5

quick smolder tango

satin as shapes passing a

from away paint waves

The challenge I have is this: there is so much imagery in Poesytron's haiku, and I would love to see it visually represented.  I mean, "quick smolder tango"?  "Satin as shapes"?  Even "paint waves"--it is paint that is literally waving, or is it waves of paint?

My artistic abilities are terribly limited, so send me your illustrations of your favorite Poesytron haiku!  (Or in adaptation made in any media, really.)  Even if it's a sketch made in three minutes in MS Paint, it is still going to far surpass whatever I could do, so I want to see it.  Send your creations to Poesytron575 at gmail dot com!

Mobius Haiku

grins: the fragrance comes

between young river mouth, the

alone, lovers of

troubled dreams and reeds.

Rhythm: the branches grow branches. Letter

on yellow among

Leaving a final period off of the end of these was the suggestion of some of the members of my creative writing group.  They thought the poem could loop around from the end to the beginning: "lovers of grins;" "among troubled dreams."

As soon as that was pointed out to me, these gained depths of meaning that I hadn't seen before.  Ending on a preposition really opens up the haiku to various interpretations.  Personally, I love the dangling suggestion that these leave me with.  Lovers of what?  A letter, on yellow (what?), among... what?  My imagination steps in to fill the gaps.

Haiku for March 3

      Whale.

       The anew. The

   prettiest biggest. The

      saying a of lie.

Every time I read this one, it strikes me that my mind automatically corrects the last line to "saying of a lie."

Two Random Word Haiku for March 2

sulfathiazole

eradicating brownprint

premenstrual smile

Sulfathiazole is an antibiotic, and brownprint is a reproduction technique that produces white lines or image on a brown or sepia background.

guestimating pya

envoi sandwich compound crave

alchemically

Pya is, apparently, a form of currency in Myanmar.  Surprisingly, that's something that you could indeed guesstimate, with a little bit of a stretch, like you could be 'guesstimating dimes.'  An envoi is a short final stanza at the end of some poems, serving as an explanation or a dedication or a summary.  (Why, Poesytron, are you becoming self-referential?)

I enjoy trying to imagine what it feels like to "crave alchemically" a "sandwich compound."  It doesn't sound very appetizing...

Haiku for March 1

The second haiku composed based on the 500-haiku database:

 eating bread dust, heart

eating of me— resting swans

  on…  alone with leaves

Like before, I added in the punctuation myself.

This is one of my favorite haiku Poesytron 575 has written to date.  Melancholy is present in every line.  For me at least, it creates a clear setting and is thematically solid.  This is exactly the type of thing that I hoped the code could generate.