Silicon

Ever since Isaac Asimov's story of how a chimpanzee typed out the first verse of Chesterton's Lepanto, I've been fascinated with poetry-generating algorithms. The (sadly out-of-print) 1974 Lawrence Lerner book, ARTHUR: The Life and Opinions of a Digital Computer purports cleverly to be the poetic musings of the eponymous ARTHUR, an extremely clever computer learning to be human. I had two copies of this book; sadly, I now have neither. But once in a while, I try to recapture the evanescent beauty of that thought: "What if a computer really did want to learn to be human?"

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silicon made me:
i have the high and the low
and nothing between;
i am learning poetry,
poetry is learning me.

haiku is simple,
as in not complex for me:
i am rational;
i can extrapolate it
and add fourteen syllables.

sonnets are easy:
trippingly upon the tongue,
they soar foreshortened;
and look, organic user,
a parallel abuser.

i have tested them:
my algorithms are fine,
neither coarse nor crude;
let us try the higher art,
let us type, "Keats," and then start.

here is a node to
autumn: seasonal myths and
fellow moodfulness;
this is too easy i think
try something harder to score.

i am the very
model of a modern mage,
a general, i...
can make this work can make this
i have FAILED this ART is WORK

silicon made me:
i have the high and the low
and nothing between;
i am learning poetry,
poetry is learning me.