Comment to Christina’s “Bot or Not” Post

**So normally I’d just make this a comment but I really wanted to add a photo, so if you haven’t read Christina’s great post titled “Bot or Not” go do that**

Initially I was alarmed by the idea of computer generated poetry, but as usual my curiosity got the best of me and I took the quiz.  I wasn’t expecting the quiz to be as challenging as it was.  I got the majority correct, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have to make a lot of really good guesses.

I took a screenshot of this particular poem because I’ve never seen poetry like this before.  The poem is called “_sM[CLEAN]ALL[THE.THINGS]ness-es_”, and it’s by a human named Mez Breeze.

At a quick glance the poem looks exactly like html computer jargon (which is a little tricksy, botpoet.com, you cheeky bastard).  But taking a closer look there’s something more interesting going on.  Although much of the language is distracting and in your face, I feel like that is probably the point Breeze is making as a contemporary poet faced with the distractions of technology every day.  After digging a little more into Breeze and her works, I found out this style of poetry is called “code poetry.”  If anyone wants to see more of her work, here’s her Live Journal: http://netwurker.livejournal.com/ –although the more I read her work, the more I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack (there’s no Nature in there and it’s hurting my soul.)

I’d love to see what other people think about this poem in particular, because I’m still thinking about it/trying to figure it out.  If anyone has heard of this kind of electronic literature, let me know what you like or dislike about it.  I think it’s a concept that’s fascinating and disturbing.

I don't know whether I want to hangout with this poem, or punch it in the face.
I don’t know whether I want to hangout with this poem, or punch it in the face.

2 Replies to “Comment to Christina’s “Bot or Not” Post”

  1. There is something disturbing about this, perhaps in a similar way to how free verse was disturbing in the poetry scene when it first entered the fray. This kind of poetry is so aesthetically relevant to our culture, even if it’s hard to make sense of. Also, this form forces one to use as much punctuation/as many symbols as words, which is also really disturbing, and really cool. In this poem many of the spaces are replaced with underscores, connecting each word and character to one another as if the structure would crumble without them. A few letters are randomly capitalized. And now I’m freaking out even more because as I type this comment, right below me is this:

    “You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

    "

    Is nothing sacred?

    1. Now I’m doubly freaked out because by copying the text below the comment box I ended up somehow accidentally striking through my “Is nothing sacred?” while also getting rid of the actual html coded part (because it actually did its thing). I think the computers have won this round.

Leave a Reply to Ethan Keeley Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.