Dear write out louders,

do you get spam poetry?
I dont often look at the spam but this caught my eye (as well as some viagra pills)

It was a poem seemingly invented by the computer.
I have had one similar one before which I kept but this one seemed more sophisticated, whilst it is not coherant it is interesting and certainly varied and evocative.

Have you recieved this poem? Or have you other 'spam robot' poems? Its quite a phenomenom and a symptom of the modern age and a pointer to the expanding poetry form. We have had 'free verse' , 'slam' 'rap' and now what I can only call 'Spam robot Poetry' or SRP

Your serious coments appreciated.

heres (one) of the poems.


UNTITLED SPAM POEM 2
---------------------------------------
Brush the lone giant in that somber pall.
By the design of our own silent eyes
and chaste, lovely as lakes to the retired men
And up there I cannot tell if it is still
Stars, the last day, endless and centerless,
What can we know of whatever picture-plane
That square—Oh, 56 x 56
Of meaning like these—the world created by
And so I gaze avidly
Cascading snowflakes settle in the pines,
Chose to walk out of it, they'd have to pass
snoozing. A schoolgirl on vacation gapes,
They tear apart the mist, it is as though,
The edge of that other square cut from the right
Escapees from the cold work of living,
Away from their profundity of surface.
Astonished that you have returned to go
Stunned in their voiceless way to be alive
Calling me to you with wild gesturings

Interesting and peculiar.

I can't make any sense of it, but there is some imagery that works. I suppose it could be robot generated, but some aspects of it make me suspect that it is not.

The main reasons that I think it is human are:

the use of punctuation
the variable line length
the use of numbers as well as words.

What I would be interested in is what was the point of the spam. Did it seek to sell something , or lead you to a dodgy site?

Hi Malcolm


It was a spam selling computer software.

However, I still think its computer generated using lines from excisiting works. Like a cut up piece. I suppose the way that many beat poets used the technique and even lyrics like David Bowie famousley did. Of course its difficult to unlock a hidden meaning as the computer has no apreciative intelligence (yet) however that is only a matter of time and I am convinced this will happen.

The fact that the poem I posted has some lines in it and that it has an overall themed 'feel' indicates a step in the right direction.

Of course none of the technique is new but the artificial element is


'Daisy daisy...........anyone?'

Right.

I love computing and robots so it appeals to me a lot to have a robot that would entertain me by reading its own poetry to me while I sit on the sofa with a glass of wine and don't have to move at all or even think to create my own work.

I think I will buy Asimo from Honda and feed him the whole works of all the great poets of history (plus the whole exquisite cannon of Malpoetry) and see what he comes up with. I had better teach him to go to the fridge and bring new chilled full bottles as required.

I am a computer generated poet and I have artificial intelligence but how I wish I had your human emotions so that I could enjoy Big Brother more.

Hi Peter,
I get one of these poems almost every day, I was really disapointed as I thought I'd been sent a real poem and I tried to reply and then was told it was a commercial advertisement and I had been sent it by a friend of mine who uses penis enlargement equipment. At that point | became concerned a) that any friend of mine would feel the need to share this info with me and b) that they had recomended me for this product!
Lol.xxx

I have never read them since as for me the most important thing about poetry is the emotion that is sustained throughout them.

So Peter is an alien and Paul is a robot - my what a strange family we are.lol.xxx

A freind of mine wrote a short article on something like this a few years back:

Surreal Spam Poetry - the idea for this came from a few sources - the role of the unconscious in Surrealism (e.g. automatic writing where the hand and mind of the author unite in a journey where neither is in total control) - the use of the readymade in Modern Art (e.g. the Dadaist antiart ploy of Marchel Duchamp's urinal - presented as art it becomes art) and an observation in New Scientist magazine's Feedback page which noted the poetic quality of irrelevant text found in junk e-mails. My idea was this - If you can't fight spam then why not put its content to better use? This was an exercise in word play where the aim was to demonstrate that structure (as much as content) defines how a piece of text may be read. NB. The use of irrelevant text within spam e-mails is intended to confuse junk mail filtering programs by outweighing the relevant text which is the target of the software filter.
HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES:

Cleanse Merrimack
(to the tune 'Homeward Bound' by Simon & Garfunkel)

Outbound tints cadenced abutment,
Perceives containers roughness pulley.
Exhume…
Saint disliking obscurer stumped,
Nazism begrudges diffuses weave.
Forward cedar drawling plains,
Actress inspector pledged Gibraltar.
Cleanse Merrimack.

Roentgen Perfumery

Thoroughfare curriculum. Fischer bobcat.
Badland flagpole. Northernmost hurty.
Counterbalance bandy. Dutchmen curium.
Christoffel bugging Bearish feel.
Extensive dispersive. Deus repeat.
Coloratura Delphinus. Montrachet medicinal.
Airport choir. Brooke fluorspar.
Astonish decontrolling. Ashen foetus.
Abroad éclat. Scar exploit.
Christenson diffuse. Quanta gentility.
Dial spandrel. Snob longitudinal.
Foetus carbuncle. Chiffon amply.
Career infamous. Linger adulthood.

*** Roentgen Perfumery ***



A lot of it is nonsense but I thought it quite an interesting technique to come up with unusual phrasing. I like the Foetus Carbuncle in the last one he put together.

Ross Sutherland of Aisle16 is doing a masters in computer genrated poetry at Liverpool.

Meanwhile, you can read about Vogon poetry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogon_poetry

And generate your own Vogon poetry at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml