Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer Poetry (Wesleyan Poetry Series) - Softcover

Hartman, Charles O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819522392 ISBN 13: 9780819522399

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 1996

Synopsis

In this engaging, accessible memoir, Charles Hartman shows how computer programming has helped him probe poetry's aesthetic possibilities. He discusses the nature of poetry itself and his experiences with primitive computer-generated poetry programs and -- illustrated with sample computer-produced verses -- traces the development of more advanced hardware and software.

The central question about this cyber-partnership, Hartman says, "isn't exactly whether a poet or a computer writes the poem, but what kinds of collaboration might be interesting." He examines the effects of randomness, arbitrariness, and contingency on poetic composition, concluding that "the tidy dance among poet and text and reader creates a game of hesitation. In this game, a properly programmed computer has a chance to slip in some interesting moves."

About this title

About the Authors

CHARLES O. HARTMAN is Professor of English and Poet in residence at Connecticut College, author of Glass Enclosure (Wesleyan Poetry, 1995) and Jazz Text (1991), and coauthor of Sentences (1995). His prose program is available on the World Wide Web. Hartman's memoirs about how computer programming helped him probe poetry's aesthetic possibilities.

CHARLES O. HARTMAN is Professor of English and Poet in residence at Connecticut College, author of Glass Enclosure (Wesleyan Poetry, 1995) and Jazz Text (1991), and coauthor of Sentences (1995). His prose program is available on the World Wide Web.

Hartman's memoirs about how computer programming helped him probe poetry's aesthetic possibilities.

Reviews

While it's the brainy, chess-playing computer that steals national headlines, Hartman is here to tell us that there are other machines (and human instigators) busy at work on metrical beauty and imagery. Writing in a voice that, thankfully, is neither geeky nor zealous, Hartman, a poet (Glass Enclosures) and professor of English at Connecticut College, lays out the basics of both programming and versifying, then introduces several programs he and colleagues, e.g., Jackson Mac Low and Hugh Kenner, have come up with to produce poetry. Essentially, these programs are random, and sometimes not so random, word generators. Lyrics pour through them much like radioactive dye flows through the veins of a body, illuminating the operation of a complex system, in this case, language. While such tracking captures the logical side of the writing process, it cannot touch the emotional. Until the day a processor becomes enamored of the bytes coursing through it and suddenly interrupts a spreadsheet to generate a sonnet, it is the human, notes Hartman in the cases explicated here, who tells the machine how and when to create. That said, this exploration will fascinate readers curious about what makes poetry, and how.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0819522392
• ISBN 13: 9780819522399
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 164