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Poetry for Hackers: A crab canon for Douglas Hofstadter
- TeMPOraL 15y agoA beautiful poem. Also, GEB is a great book.
- michael_dorfman 15y agoThat was a very nice poem, but these kinds of things are actually not all that hard, if you are willing to play with them long enough. I once wrote a palindrome that was a rhymed quatrain-- it took about a week of fiddling, if I recall correctly.
- patricklynch 15y ago[Insert any creative work or admirable skill here] is actually not all that hard, if you are willing to play with it long enough.
- michael_dorfman 15y agoSure, but some are harder than others. My point is that composing something like this is more akin to solving a crossword puzzle than to composing a symphony. As I said, a week of fiddling will get you a (letter-by-letter) palindrome of four lines, at least in my experience.
- jpadvo 15y agoIn terms of satisfying the technical demands of the form, yes. But creating a work with evocative punch like this poem has is more akin to composing a symphony.
- Fargren 15y agoThe spanish translation of that chapter of GEB was not enjoyable, sadly enough.
- riffraff 15y agoStrange, I came here to say the italian version was pretty good :) This may be a function of the author being a(n impressively) fluent speaker of the language, though on the other hand the translation of Carrol's Jabberwocky poem in the book is terrible.
- thesteamboat 15y agoI believe he was using other people's translations. (At least, in the English version, he compared it to other's French and German translations.)
- bambax 15y agoNeat idea. My try: Unbelievable! He found on the tired sofa an image with his ex girlfriend, a strange and worn-out pillow, and he cried; he longed for a strange and worn-out pillow with his ex girlfriend on the tired sofa; an image he found unbelievable.
- biot 15y agoIf you liked that, play the game Braid (http://braid-game.com http://braid-game.com). I won't give any spoilers, but it's a $9.95 purchase so just go out and buy it already. :)
- patrickas 15y agoThat's strange but I never made the connection until you mentioned it! Braid is one of my all time favorite games too! Edit: And as of yesterday it is available in the Ubuntu software center.
- danms 15y agoThanks a lot for the heads up on Braid being available through Ubuntu software center, I just bought and installed it now - lovely game. Lovely poem as well. I really enjoyed "I Am a Strange Loop", guess I should get around to reading GEB as well.