Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
How Computers Write Poetry
The first efforts at creating poetry with computers appears to have been
in Stuttgart in 1959, where Theo Lutz'
Stochatische Texte
were created
on a Zuze Z22 computer and published in the journal
Augenblick
.The
first computer poems in English to attract attention were published in
1962 in
Horizon
, a glossy culture magazine, under the pen name Auto-
Beatnik.
5
Other examples of Auto-Beatnik's poems have appeared on
the Internet dated as early as 1960, suggesting that the project was al-
most contemporaneous with Lutz' work. One of its 1960 poems is called
“Insects”:
All children are small and crusty
And all pale, blind, humble waters are cleaning,
An insect, dumb and torrid, comes out of the daddyo
How is an insect into this fur?
The general method employed in Auto-Beatnik was the foundation for
much of the subsequent research on computer-created poetry. This
method employs a framework consisting of a line, or even a number
of lines, arranged in a definite metrical pattern with recognized gram-
matical structures. There is a dictionary of words that are acceptable in
the various slots in these frameworks. And there are simple heuristics
to help make the created work poetry-like, for example choosing words
that rhyme in certain slots. Auto-Beatnik's poetry generation was based
on 128 different sentence structures in which the various slots were filled
from a vocabulary of only 3,500 words, yet the program's poetry was con-
sidered sufficiently remarkable for the early 1960s to make it the subject
of a
Time Magazine
article,
6
in which two of its poems were presented,
including this one:
All girls sob like slow snows.
Near a conch, that girl won't weep.
Stumble, moan, go, this girl might sail
On the desk.
This girl is dumb and soft.
In analysing this poem Chris Funkhouser comments that the program is
able to emulate a strain of poetry influenced by the Beat Generation, and
5
The Auto-Beatnik programmer, who worked in the Librascope Division of General Precision,
Inc., in Glendale, California, preferred the anonymity of the pseudonym R. M. Worthy (“Ahm
Wor thy” ) .
6
5 November 1962.
