I've just read a couple of amazing essays on the subject of machine-written 'poetry', by a writer and computer programmer calling himself 'Smallnumberofmonkeys.'
You'll quickly grasp the thinking behind his adopted name, I'm sure!
Briefly, it seems it's now possible to define language in terms recognisable to computers and to teach them to manipulate those components into more or less intelligible new phrases, and even lines of poetry.
Rhyme, rhythm, assonance and alliteration are all programmable, along with such ideas as precedence, while context and meaning are perhaps less simple. Nonetheless, some of the remarkable phraseology - stripped of the need for context and meaning - can be highly original and provocative.
While the bare, unmodified poems produced may lack a certain well, human touch, they can be a great springboard for a poet's imagination. And the technology is developing all the time, especially with the development of 'neural' programs, able to recognise dialect, etc.
The essays are packed with useful links to other work going on in the field and to biographical information on some of the other pioneers.
Essay 1 is here,
and 2 is here.
Just imagine what an 'ironed-out' program could do to the careers of professional poets!
Roy
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