Mon Apr 27 13:18:38 2009 (Flesh and Blood)

My house is a glance
the couched Brazilian
jaguar does
not remember,
I scanned his
face. There he is
merely flesh
and blood. Five days in
the brown waves of fog
toss up to the
mines, but he stands
waiting for rain.



Statistically Analyzed Texts:
T.S. Eliot, Poems
Eliza Poor Donner Houghton, The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate

Tue Apr 28 21:37:18 2009 (Our Girlish)

The lamp. I should
hope so, all our
girlish secrets.
One old frump that
must have thought he was
going to have a
lady I
let go the
other day that
is the life
of it. The head
of mirrors.


Statistically Analyzed Texts:
T.S. Eliot, Poems
Kenneth McGaffey, The Sorrows of a Show Girl

For this continuing series, I've been pairing Eliot's Collected Poems with another single text to create 12-line poems, each line 3-5 syllables long. This one's almost too prosaic, but shows off the remarkable grammatical continuity the software is capable of.

The Same - The Project is Taking Form

I've written three of "The Same" poems now using the three original input texts. I've tried to use a few different texts, mixing them in with the three I started with, but the results were not promising. I'll just stick to Darwin, Dostoyevsky and Verne. I'm including here the Gnoetry output along with an image of the form I've chosen for it after formatting it in OpenOffice. I've chosen to replace all punctuation with hovering dots (not sure what they're called). It matches the movement I want the poem to have on the page as well as when read out loud.

I'm still eschewing pronouns with this series.

Let me know what you think.

______________

The Same (The Weight)

Sat Apr 25 14:41:20 2009

The head, regardless of the island, is
asserted, long before the island, with
the order of domestication. With
the rest. The real, between the species of
the forms, protected as the birds in weight.
The air, the struggle for convenience. And
in weight. The truth. The facts in weight. Result:
a man accustomed to the present day.

The air, in rubbing, greasing, and the air
in expectation of degrees, a truce
between the air projected works. Perhaps,
transposed. In three existing birds. In all
relations. Hybrids, with the wind, traversed
the double cord, a thousand serfs. Perhaps
the inundation. For the mercy is
a thing, between the three existing birds.

The year. In man's productions; everywhere
the last in an extreme exhaustion now
explained, accumulated, lay in weight.
The future, their desire to begin.
The currents of the neck. The chimneys and
the beach in motion. There were many means.
The only explanation of the air
in this condition, and in such a year.



Texts:
Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island
Feodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

______________

Sun Apr 26 17:35:26 2009 (Old World & Tea)

Here we read
in the old
nocturnal
smells that cross
and cross with
the petty
forms of religion
and watching
on this point of man
to emancipate
the slaves was the old
world and tea.


Statistically Analyzed Texts:
T.S. Eliot, Poems
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897

Fri Apr 24 16:16:27-16:23:57 2009 - The Same (The Duel)

More of The Same. I'm having fun with this series. Now I'm composing each stanza as a separate Gnoetry session (1 stanza of 8 lines of blank verse) and then putting them together in order. I may end up putting them together as one long poem of discrete stanzas, but for now I like to think in threes as best I can.

The Same (The Duel)

Fri Apr 24 16:16:27-16:23:57 2009

A duel with a wave, fatigue, a cause.
The sea, a bear? Another thing, between
the northern and profound. In these details,
repeated, fertile. One, because the more
remote formations; and the sea, a large
proportion, as exaggerated. Is
the common life, except in any one
formation. As the children of transport.

Another thing, accumulated, by
the leg, in being so. The more perfect,
the most repulsive, of the breeding of
success. A lie, a little patience, all
the same. The plants, in several species of
the forest of sensations, never to
diminish, and the more diversified
in structure from the one in everything.

Again the archipelago. Perhaps
the outer dotted lines, perhaps the sea,
perhaps, together with the pollen from
a human intellect. A lantern, and
preceding forms. The same in all. Perhaps
the trees! Whoever is developed. Is
the wet. The boat completely rigged, transposed.
Another thing, between the males alone.



Texts:
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Feodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island

Fri Apr 24 12:14:36 2009 (Rubina, Finally)

I said why
not with me.
I looked for some
minutes of random
licking, Rubina
finally raised
her feet wide,
afternoons, with
a slight smile
in her as she
fell in my shorts and
luxuries.


Statistically Analyzed Texts:
T.S. Eliot, Poems
The Internet, Indian Erotica

Thu Apr 23 20:35:48 2009

You are not blind! Let
me down. I
look for your
humble self in
any lucrative
business intention
for our
country. And I have
saved this afternoon
for you and I have
seen eyes in
inquisition.


Statistically Analyzed Texts:
T.S. Eliot, Poems
The Internet, Nigerian Spam and Bogus Lotto

Front of the Past

Wed Apr 22 19:28:33 2009

He would hang out
no signals, he
said. I rapped
at him through
the land. The
old man, I sung out,
Huck began
to whisper for some
time? Lord, I
agreed, and pounding
him with a more
complex nature
than hers, a late look
in front of the time
Ben was past.



Statistically Analyzed Texts:
Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer

Gnoetry End-User Gnowledge

From April 20: "I'm deliberately using several sources in combination now, with little intent to make any intertextual statement. Is this merely an issue of authorial intent (and the number of sources being used), or should a gnoet be more aware of the original texts that are being combined/re-written/recycled with Gnoetry?"

From where I stand, one of the points of Gnoetry is to destablize a privileged notion of what it means to be a) creative and b) a poet. Gnoetry is most successful when an end-user who has never written a poem, professes to hate poetry, and hasn't read a single text in the database walks away from her experience with Gnoetry and says: "I feel like a poet!" (This has happened on several occasions, by the way). A non-creative response to the text or texts will automatically create an "intertextual statement" in part because the poem is going to be read by the final author of the gnoem, the reader, and also because this form of statement is an unavoidable consequence of the gnoetic process since the texts have been recombined historically. Texts are not themselves canonical; canonicity is an invented and arbitrary ideology. To call a text "canonical" is to argue that it's static and its history is frozen. Gnoetry is a diachronic engine, rendering the text as it is at the moment of its recombination. This infuses the statistically analyzed texts with new meaning; the canon has been wrung out of the text.

Gnoetry is a style of reading (wreading, perhaps) and so once one has used a text gnoetically, one has read it. What's more interesting to me is the effect of what I've called "gestalt markers" on the readers of gnoems; that is, what does a reader do when she comes across a character name she recognizes in any given gnoem? How does that change the reading of the poem? What gaps will the reader's conscious mind fill in with details from the known text(s)?

For more on all of this, see http://p-queue.org/vol-5 (no online version of the article, alas)

More of The Same

I think I might keep running with these three sources for a while. I like what Gnoetry giving me to work with.

More of The Same.

_______________

The Same (Transposed)

Sun Apr 19 18:31:23 2009

In all confusion, more perhaps! In their
effects, a fact. A while, besides a while,
belonging, everything! In any blows,
in an oblique direction. As the beach,
transposed, a hundred million years ago,
the longitude, accumulated, by
degrees. The six survivors, multiplied,
because allied in groups, produced, evolved.

The island, like a ball. The little spot.
In books. The slaves, the cynicism of
transport, a species of the house. The mast,
the reproductive system, as a ball.
Another species of consumption. With
the transformation of the island and
the water, on the archipelago,
the feeling of revenge. The embryo.

The wet. The breed, the three together, is
the state! A wall in common, there exist
organic beings to await the end,
the woody and the task, the first, because
the first were all destroyed. The office of
the embryos, transposed. Upon a wall,
in other countries, more ferocious than
the last degree, the wet, the west confused.



Texts:
Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island
Feodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

Regarding Authorial Knowledge of Source Texts Used in Gnoetry

A few weeks ago, I found this discussion on Grand Text Auto concerning my knowledge (or my deliberate ignorance) of Heart of Darkness during the composition of a light heart, its black thoughts. You can read the thread for yourself (I posted my own response in the comment stream), but I thought it was worth hearing what your thoughts were on this issue of source text knowledge.

I'm deliberately using several sources in combination now, with little intent to make any intertextual statement. Is this merely an issue of authorial intent (and the number of sources being used), or should a gnoet be more aware of the original texts that are being combined/re-written/recycled with Gnoetry?

With an Occasional Jesus

Sun Apr 19 17:06:42 2009

Here was a frequent
guest at
my feet, hung a
heart as flimsy
as paper, broke up
a child playing
with the new stove?


Statistically Analyzed Texts:
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race
Hildegard G. Frey, The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country

Wuthering Haiku: A Sequence

Sat Apr 18 15:13:04 2009

The moon shone, under
which she should die for crying
and beasts out yonder!

Sat Apr 18 15:15:45 2009

I felt that Heathcliff
has forgot the first thing that
ever I answered.

Sat Apr 18 15:16:29 2009

But, excepting a
few yards of loose earth was the
doleful cry afresh.

Sat Apr 18 15:16:56 2009

I inquired of
the shabby coat, and appeared
going to bear it!

Sat Apr 18 15:17:20 2009

Every one was
active but Miss Cathy shrieked
and stretched out her heart.

Sat Apr 18 15:17:51 2009

Catherine, coupled
with some slight coaxing. A man's
life is in Heaven.

Sat Apr 18 15:18:20 2009

Catherine looked up
and all, she said, addressing
his advantages.

Sat Apr 18 15:19:12 2009

I attempted to
touch the child on his cheeks, the
fellow. I've a change!

Sat Apr 18 15:20:38 2009

I can't be made to
do with books, since no one will
do better for me.

Sat Apr 18 15:21:21 2009

I concealed the fact.
I'd rather see Edgar at
bay than formerly.

Sat Apr 18 15:21:59 2009

Treachery and I
be a good man, and make a
fiend of existence.

Sat Apr 18 15:23:04 2009

One might suppose you
had not a place where she was
half hidden by him.


Statistically Analyzed Text:
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

From the Gnoetic Archives...

Mon Mar 29 16:41:37 2004

The bottom of the bitter vision. There,
the people who in such a part conforms
itself. The machinations and the face
a mill the verses, which the wind, returns

in doubt, the poet, feeding then the scene
before the others, who were scattered, by
a thousand waters, at the doom divine?
The door! The other dogs! In this above

the future life. The motion of the door!
Among malicious cats the fact the place
the structure will recount. The master of
the council, which in this unnerved, in words.



Statistically Analyzed Texts:
Edgar Allen Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher
Dante Alighieri, Inferno

That Summer by Gnoetry & Gregory Fraser

Each idea came in a different size, at variant speed—
like a rabbit or a library. Gradually, the question dawned:
Is there nothing in the grange? The age was proof of what
can become so soft, but someone has to cut the worm.

I’m not sure what brand of jealousy flared in me,
though I like to pretend I’m able to make do.
Yet then: the dozen streets, ropes fastened
to a king’s accounts, the strong resemblance to iron work,

as the critics noted. (I had not expected any public,
generous or cruel.) That summer, I kept thinking about
the long division of blood into generations, about
the busts of the very rich who abhor a vacuum, i.e.

the hard press of the ill. What strangers we thought
we were, what objects of a breathless silence
occupying stately rooms. Behold. Forget. The soldiers,
the flesh, the sea. And every friend in name alone.

A Preview of Gnoetry0.3: Sonnet

A most substantial evil of the two
attacking vessels simply floated down
the old, the ground upon a tree, in true
proportion to the foreign service. Town

affairs, seduction and abortion, for
the world, religion and the thirst; the new
republic will direct the actions or
decisions using other forms in two

reports. In all divisions of the wall,
the chip in when the time expended by
the secretary of the ramp, the ball.
The two. Bernard: the high frontier; the sky

behind the body of the church in which
the ceiling to the needs assessment, pitch.

Two Child's Day Poems

I'm starting to tokenize more texts into Gnoetry's library. I've started with Woods Hutchinson's The Child's Day, which I have been using as a source file to compose other poems in conjunction with the Markov chaining program I also use (Mchain). It's wonderful how different the poems are when I use a different program/process.

Here's what I worked out tonight:

_________________

Tue Apr 14 00:22:06 2009

THE NERVE IN SAVING IT

Just as it is. There is probably something in
it or behind it, sealed as it can hurt you. So it is
almost as much as they grow older and worried. This
is so precious. If, the fresh air from the barn, the
fresh food value, information,

as fast as possible. Of course it is: do it. Work
and play and work too, cooking does, and of course you
can roll over and over and over
it, it tastes very different. It is as
warm as your nails are a part of the

house fly, wholesome, pure food, plenty of good food, such as
potatoes, and all sorts of cereal.
If need be called our nerves so that it floats and rises like
onions. The doctors call it. So you don't
have consumption, and never get tired of cereal.



Texts:
Woods Hutchinson, The Child's Day

_________________

Tue Apr 14 00:47:03 2009

THIS IS TO DRINK AS MUCH AS THEY LIKE

They did not always do what they wanted. In one
sense, in the house. They were killed. Just think how many beats would
there be in serious trouble at once. They can. Some
people are ignorant and dirty and others
make you vomit, and made them, in

more ways than you can, and golden because it was, for
the power in your stomach. They wore short sleeves and
short trousers. Each little wave in turn beats
against a little draft, they need it this time
to drink it better. Fill up with it.

At what hour do it. Where they are killed by themselves.
These little hairs are on it. You see it.
This is a picture of them. Some of you have been in the house.
But now we drink, for we are beginning
to find out how the body is liquid, like a drunkard.



Texts:
Woods Hutchinson, The Child's Day

Jealousy Case #413

Mon Apr 13 14:15:53 2009

A double line a little more. A small
estate in Sussex, near the city. To
the window. It becomes the daughter of
the letter, and the man, the three! A day,
a man in London. You appeared upon
the little things. The table. You appeared
upon the top. Her interests. He remarked,
a woman, while her body slightly bent,
her body slightly bent, her head. Her lips,
a woman, with a great convenience, and

a look. A moment later we were well
within the week. The rest, explaining that
the money of campaign. The fire. To
the countess was accustomed. I presume?
Her husband. On the world. Her lips, remarked
the dog. In front. The church. The case? Besides,
remember that the name, within a most
retiring disposition. I believe
in which her lips, a man. The paper and
the same effects. A lover he observed.



Statistically Analyzed Text:
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Easter Sunday Afternoon

Sun Apr 12 13:06:02 2009

The work of thunder. "I've had a
violent way," she continued
it logically. At last the time traveller smiled.
"Well, come, the rule of Jesus
of Nazareth, we had been deceived," and slipped the
bunch of keys from the train at styles on
the floor and lay around her shoulders and neck. "North
of rum!" Lawrence blushed, and
grew ever broader and more dark. I asked him what he
knew that blind man had drifted very far. "Why not? I'm
not much use, after the walk
across the big open completely."



Statistically Analyzed Texts:
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
The Internet, Indian Erotica
Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine


Note from end user Eric Elshtain:
As a collaborator with the software, I found a few arguments for quotation marks.

The Sorrows of a Customs Girl

Sat Apr 11 11:05:16 2009

In other words, behold, the widow made
her so, alas, about a half a thought,
in short exhausted gasps, hurrah. The show
itself. The future. Now, remember? There,
the outward motives to remunerate
the girls together on the run away,
in their resemblance to her father, who
maintained the theory, his enchanted by
the hand, a rattlesnake in there. In all
the notions of remorse. The question of
direct perception, bless her father, has
the state. The only time the lightning struck.
In which the wind, her hands, her eyes; sometimes
the weather moderated. It's the most
effective dress, the king in that. The end!



Texts statistically analyzed:
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Hildegard G. Frey, The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin
Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country
Kenneth McGaffey, The Sorrows of a Show Girl

Easter Weekend Gnoetry

Fri Apr 10 17:04:23 2009

He turned back, and
gathered all the same
sacrifices
of the unknown god. But
snow and ice
endured the fire touched
them not so? O the

depth of the Lord God.
Mother, is laid, and
art holy: and the six
hundred talents to
the congregation
shall be saved
from morning.



Texts Statistically Analyzed:
The Apocrypha
The King James Bible

Syllabically Constrained Freedom Couplets

Wed Apr 8 20:56:35 2009

What was this arid
desolation, flushing

at the work
of explanation with a cough. He

stood still time for these plants
to grow less impassive and he

slept, for still he floated in a tumult
of sounds, varying in strength,

leapt out towards the flare. You're as
white as the first winter finery.



Texts:
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country
John Milton, Paradise Regained
H. G. Wells, The First Men In The Moon

The Same - The Night

Wed Apr 8 16:06:57 2009

The night in Chile, he remained absorbed
in latitude. The same, the male. A grain,
a flag, the greater number of the same
result. The forms in vapor, or in some
degree the firearms, were not in some
degree the hussy. But the same. The moon,
retired. Besides the fireplace. The same,
appeared before the species, called a man

in question, as in that position, that
the same before the settlers had erased
the fruit, in certain awe, a great event
in leather, piercing eyes upon the same.
The fire of the brain affected, when
the same, in short, the worse the ache. Perhaps
the thickness of enjoyment, Mexico,
define the several hundred steps. The time

required for the whole. The same, in due
proportion as the organs of extreme
perfection of the species. With the same
conditions, barricade the steps, a cross
between the species. As a favor. Take
the place, the island, ready for the same.
The sky towards the point. The spreading and
diversified. The male alone. The same.



Statistically analyzed texts:
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Feodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island

Call of the Tanka

Tue Apr 7 19:20:48 2009

The tongues of all were
out and signed the book for the
dogs with a snarl that

was the cherished belief of
each separate muscle, Buck.



Text statistically analyzed:
Jack London, Call of the Wild


Note from end user Eric Elshtain:
This tanka came out in one fell click; good grammar and all!

from end user Gregory Fraser

Needles to Say

Heroin and darning, thistle of my Scottish birth; royal knitters' in the court
of Henry VIII-needles to say, in land-time we mean nil, and travel mostly paper seas.

By syringe, we should give ourselves to fruit and infant laughter, plunge the moon's
dilation in Gwendolyn Bay. Hypodermics of sunlight, injections of vitamin D

to keep the rickets away. Ask me, and every country should select a stitch,
as Denmark chose the "cross." Romantic collars, tablecloth of filet crochet.

You find the pulse, tighten rubber on the upper arm; I'll swab and jab the crook,
draw until we understand only what our names allow. Samplers that bless

a cozy abode, Rich's "ivory [ . . . ] hard to pull." Needles to say, it's always
summer for the reader, though the spring of sounding out words is passed.

No wonder June nights dive like gulls as we try to hold one longing, failing
as the brush toads failed to convince: the seventh kitten was a sad mistake.

Unlike embroidery, needlepoint uses canvas to form new fabric. The very fine
is called petit-point. Like needlepoint, I pry cherrystones apart, and you

spritz lemon into their china bowls. This late, Montauk, only the rudders
of our sexes steer. The winds are salty and a shadow sprawls beneath

our neighbors' pine. We fear these neighbors, needles to say, but are protected
by heat lightning's electric fence. It's good to be only seasonally afraid.

I dropped a diamond on Led Zeppelin I, began the spacewalk of my teens.
(You recall LPs, those Hegelians with their spiraling ideals.) And once,

a doctor drove a long one in my ankle to drive an ache away. Earlier,
no later, no now: my wife pokes hormones in her thigh, calling herself,

with a chortle, The Hen. But her laughter is missing something more
than the terminal "s" in a mistyped transitional phrase. It could be

we can't have children, and it seems-clearer than ever-
poetry can't take their place. Needles to say, you'll say.

Note from the end user Gregory Fraser:
I was working a lot with the renga, and with a combination of "scientific" and "religious" texts. I gathered a lot of passages composed with Gnoetry into a large block, and then started to add to and strip away from the language in a relatively wild rush. I let the draft sit for a couple of weeks, adding polish and form very late in the game.

Nonce syllabic form

Sun Apr 5 19:52:48 2009

Oh, you are apt
to be utterly
incapable of doing that for
a promise that she would be
separated by wide intervals of time,
compared with man. He pleases. To the
interior gloom. I

held no communication with me, Nelly,
true; though I spoke
softly and put it in my mind. I
closed it, must have been
surprised to see him
again. Catherine
pushed another morning.



Statictically analyzed texts:
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Blank Verse

Sat Apr 4 21:44:04 2009

The body, had perverted Eve, amazed.
The rest, in their creation they were good
enough? In fact? Again, Rebecca thought.

Whenever I remember thinking of
the bridge between the eyes. Her from the year
before the enterprise. A very long,

ignoble bondage. She became a most
sarcastic tone, the widow of a dear
companion for a thousand years ago.



Statistically analyzed texts:
Jane Austen, Emma
John Milton, Paradise Lost
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

New Gnoetry chapbook

Beard of Bees Press is pleased to present new full-length Gnoetry.

Brief Statement of Intent

This blog has been created in order to lend readers a daily diet of Gnoems composed by a variety of end-users, and to provide a space for occasional discussions of computational poetics.

Click for original Gnoetic bombast.