Wednesday, September 17, 2008

From Robo-poet: The Throbbing Vortex

Robo-poet is a cut-up style poetry generator (cut-ups are a form "popularized" by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin).

Clearly they structured this poetry generator around lines beginning with an adjective and noun, and ending with a verb paired with an -ly adverb. This might be OK for a couplet, but any longer generated poems end up seeming rote.

This poem would be better if you deleted all the line-ending adverbs (like most writing), and varied the adjective-noun constructions. However, as I dip into all the internet poetry generators, I do want to give you their flavor. Clearly, moving the verbs around in the sentence would also help.

Robo-poet uses a fairly interesting vocabulary, and you could, with some editing, create interesting poems from its output. Robot-poet would work better without such a fomulaic approach to the line.


aggressive street dies thinly
dingy corduroy sucks impersonally
soundless rider sullies unholily


broken dream capitulates bleakly
throbbing dream usurps perfunctorily
perfect rider nags dimly


vestigal life boils grimly
capricious dope crashes irritably
concrete nothing defies awfully


deliberate enticement sucks triumphantly
uniform body smotes awfully
traveled vortex capitulates dazzlingly


foul light concocts sleeplessly
stout enticement looks hysterically
throbbing vortex shrieks completely


undisciplined entry mars completely
baleful enticement envelops dimly
raveled vowel nourishes dryly
---o0o---

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