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>Right, because you have to convince the high-status authorities to say that it connects on an emotional level so that everyone else will nod their heads to avo

>Right, because you have to convince the high-status authorities to say that it connects on an emotional level so that everyone else will nod their heads to avoid looking stupid Honest question -- did you get the same emotional read off of the machine-poems as you did the human-poems? If not, perhaps there is something more involved in poetry than stringing words together!

SilasX 10y ago
>Honest question -- did you get the same emotional read off of the machine-poems as you did the human-poems? Yep -- none.
- ythl 10y ago
  Hmm, well I was able to correctly identify every single sonnet. The machine generated ones I would read and think "What the heck was that poem about? It just rambled on about random things" whereas the human ones you could tell that all the verses were interconnected. Take Sonnet #6 for example. You can tell there is intelligence behind the sentences being written. Each line builds on the line before it. Compare to sonnet #5 which rambles on about nothing and uses duplicate words (then comes a small bright spark comes)...
  - SilasX 10y ago
    You've never seen a human poem that just seemed to ramble about nothing?
    - Kluny 10y ago
      Bad ones, sure. But I got all 6 poems right in that case as well. I had to read them carefully and think about it, but I still got them all.
    - plus 10y ago
      In this particular case I think it was fairly obvious, not so much because of the meaningfulness of the human-written poems (though the poems that were written by humans did clearly have meaning associated with them), but more because the machine-written poems were very awkward. Sonnet 1 was about a person mourning their mother who died in a car accident. It read well and made sense, so I would have been very surprised if it were written by a machine. Sonnet 2 didn't make sense, but more than that there were very awkward constructs. Rhyming "drawer" (the furniture) with "door" and "drawers" (the undergarments) with "floors" in the same quatrain reads very poorly. "Sergeant" does not rhyme with "apartment". Sonnet 3 was about something (a growing plant), and it reads well, so it was written by a human. Sonnet 4 was about something (Joy, a personification of the emotion), and it read well. "Joy" being consistently capitalized throughout was a subtlety that convinced me it was written by a human. Sonnet 5 had more awkward constructs. "Shame" and "Tame", "Inflame" and "Came" in the same stanza. "Bring" and "wandering" don't really rhyme. The last stanza is just weird -- "hear" is supposed to rhyme with "cheer", "cheers" (which is the line right before "cheer"...) is supposed to rhyme with "roars" (?), and "nights" is supposed to rhyme with "respects"? Again, it didn't really make any sense. Sonnet 6 was similar to Sonnet 3. It's about something (a growing plant again), and it reads well again.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    From my perspective, sonnet #6 was easily the best technically. That doesn't mean I connected with it emotionally, but someone could. Generally, there's a poem (more than one even) to fit any person's taste. patio11 has quoted one before, which is meaningful to him: I went to find the pot of gold that's waiting where the rainbow ends I searched and searched and searched and searched and searched and searched, and then there it was, deep in the grass under an old and twisty bough It's mine, it's mine, it's mine at last What do I search for now? Rudyard Kipling wrote a number of poems about pragmatism, among other things; here's a verse of Dane-geld: It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation for fear they should succumb and go astray So when you are requested to pay up or be molested you will find it better policy to say: We never pay anyone Dane-geld, no matter how trifling the cost For the end of that game is oppression and shame and the nation that plays it is lost! Here's a verse of Rising of the Moon that appeals to the same (very popular!) basic themes as jingoism does: All along that singing river, that black mass of men was seen High above their shining weapons flew their own beloved green Death to every foe and traitor, whistle out the marching tune And our army buys her freedom at the rising of the moon All of those are high-quality poems. The problem comes in with an upper-class movement to distinguish themselves from the rubes who appreciate good poetry by removing all the things that make it good. The problem SilasX identifies is real, and you can earn a lot of acclaim today writing awful, rhythmless, rhymeless, themeless stuff and calling it poetry. Compounding the problem, this terrible high-prestige form is what you'll learn about if you decide to take a poetry class. But we shouldn't let it ruin our view of what poetry can be.
    - dempseye 10y ago
      > this terrible high-prestige form is what you'll learn about if you decide to take a poetry class While there are classes in post-modern poetry, most poetry classes are not that. How many poetry classes have you taken?
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
        Fair enough. My experience with poetry classes is limited to elementary school and middle school. Our middle school curriculum consisted of badmouthing poetry that somebody somewhere might have actually liked. The school was proud of having classes taught by a published poet.
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  Here I was, writing a draft response about this personally unprecedented phenomenon of someone who lacked any sense of poetics at all, but I quickly realized that isn't necessarily the case. No one has asked you the right question -- could you tell the poems apart? I bet you could.
- dempseye 10y ago
  Did you get them? Did you recognise, for instance, that the first poem is the poet's recollection of cancer ravaging her mother, and of how she walked to the hospital every day to see her? Did you understand and just not care, or did you not understand and so find nothing to care about?

SilasX 10y ago

>Honest question -- did you get the same emotional read off of the machine-poems as you did the human-poems? Yep -- none.

ythl 10y ago
Hmm, well I was able to correctly identify every single sonnet. The machine generated ones I would read and think "What the heck was that poem about? It just rambled on about random things" whereas the human ones you could tell that all the verses were interconnected. Take Sonnet #6 for example. You can tell there is intelligence behind the sentences being written. Each line builds on the line before it. Compare to sonnet #5 which rambles on about nothing and uses duplicate words (then comes a small bright spark comes)...
- SilasX 10y ago
  You've never seen a human poem that just seemed to ramble about nothing?
  - Kluny 10y ago
    Bad ones, sure. But I got all 6 poems right in that case as well. I had to read them carefully and think about it, but I still got them all.
  - plus 10y ago
    In this particular case I think it was fairly obvious, not so much because of the meaningfulness of the human-written poems (though the poems that were written by humans did clearly have meaning associated with them), but more because the machine-written poems were very awkward. Sonnet 1 was about a person mourning their mother who died in a car accident. It read well and made sense, so I would have been very surprised if it were written by a machine. Sonnet 2 didn't make sense, but more than that there were very awkward constructs. Rhyming "drawer" (the furniture) with "door" and "drawers" (the undergarments) with "floors" in the same quatrain reads very poorly. "Sergeant" does not rhyme with "apartment". Sonnet 3 was about something (a growing plant), and it reads well, so it was written by a human. Sonnet 4 was about something (Joy, a personification of the emotion), and it read well. "Joy" being consistently capitalized throughout was a subtlety that convinced me it was written by a human. Sonnet 5 had more awkward constructs. "Shame" and "Tame", "Inflame" and "Came" in the same stanza. "Bring" and "wandering" don't really rhyme. The last stanza is just weird -- "hear" is supposed to rhyme with "cheer", "cheers" (which is the line right before "cheer"...) is supposed to rhyme with "roars" (?), and "nights" is supposed to rhyme with "respects"? Again, it didn't really make any sense. Sonnet 6 was similar to Sonnet 3. It's about something (a growing plant again), and it reads well again.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  From my perspective, sonnet #6 was easily the best technically. That doesn't mean I connected with it emotionally, but someone could. Generally, there's a poem (more than one even) to fit any person's taste. patio11 has quoted one before, which is meaningful to him: I went to find the pot of gold that's waiting where the rainbow ends I searched and searched and searched and searched and searched and searched, and then there it was, deep in the grass under an old and twisty bough It's mine, it's mine, it's mine at last What do I search for now? Rudyard Kipling wrote a number of poems about pragmatism, among other things; here's a verse of Dane-geld: It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation for fear they should succumb and go astray So when you are requested to pay up or be molested you will find it better policy to say: We never pay anyone Dane-geld, no matter how trifling the cost For the end of that game is oppression and shame and the nation that plays it is lost! Here's a verse of Rising of the Moon that appeals to the same (very popular!) basic themes as jingoism does: All along that singing river, that black mass of men was seen High above their shining weapons flew their own beloved green Death to every foe and traitor, whistle out the marching tune And our army buys her freedom at the rising of the moon All of those are high-quality poems. The problem comes in with an upper-class movement to distinguish themselves from the rubes who appreciate good poetry by removing all the things that make it good. The problem SilasX identifies is real, and you can earn a lot of acclaim today writing awful, rhythmless, rhymeless, themeless stuff and calling it poetry. Compounding the problem, this terrible high-prestige form is what you'll learn about if you decide to take a poetry class. But we shouldn't let it ruin our view of what poetry can be.
  - dempseye 10y ago
    > this terrible high-prestige form is what you'll learn about if you decide to take a poetry class While there are classes in post-modern poetry, most poetry classes are not that. How many poetry classes have you taken?
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      Fair enough. My experience with poetry classes is limited to elementary school and middle school. Our middle school curriculum consisted of badmouthing poetry that somebody somewhere might have actually liked. The school was proud of having classes taught by a published poet.
justratsinacoat 10y ago
Here I was, writing a draft response about this personally unprecedented phenomenon of someone who lacked any sense of poetics at all, but I quickly realized that isn't necessarily the case. No one has asked you the right question -- could you tell the poems apart? I bet you could.
dempseye 10y ago
Did you get them? Did you recognise, for instance, that the first poem is the poet's recollection of cancer ravaging her mother, and of how she walked to the hospital every day to see her? Did you understand and just not care, or did you not understand and so find nothing to care about?