My fascination with '21st century digital poetry industrialization' (as JanusNode once dubbed it) goes back over three decades. For most of that time it was a mainly private obsession. JanusNode was exposed to a larger audience when I realized—years after I had opened a Twitter account and wondered what to do with it—that Twitter was the perfect medium for JanusNode. The hardest part of successful 'pata-combinatoric poem printing ' (as JanusNode has also dubbed it) is keeping the semantic thread. It is surprisingly easy to get a machine to randomly generate 140 characters that occasionally make a statement that is witty or profound or funny or insightful. It is harder to coax a machine to randomly generate much longer strings that do not just seem obviously and dully random. However, JanusNode has always done that occasionally. Recently I came up with a way to constrain its vocabulary around a particular topic so as to increase the probability of semantic coherence across ever-longer strings. Here I am publishing for the first time some of JanusNode's recent longer works (length > 140).
There is a school of thought that says that we should remove the human touch entirely from aleatoric text thoughts. My attitude has always been that we should give computer authors no more and no less respect than we would give to any human author. I have treated JanusNode's productions here exactly the same way I would have treated a human being's productions if they were submitted to me: I have very occasionally imposed some minor edits, especially where it seemed obvious that there must just be a typographic error. Though I have therefore occasionally tweaked the punctuation, capitalization, conjugation, or phrase-splitting, there is no sense in which any person or machine could reasonably claim that I substantially altered the intent of the real author, which is here not me but randomness. I have treated randomness the same way an admiring editor would treat Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan, or Henry Miller: with sober respect for her literary talent, coupled with a realistic recognition of the fact that she might have been drunk when she wrote the text.
Enjoy.
[Image adapted from: William Felkin's (1867) A History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures]
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Marriage was strained by
waiting and
waiting
and waiting and waiting and waiting
to
commit to
investigating the perceived feminine characteristics
in women
of beauty
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Death is the termination of
identity
and
terror
hysteria
night terror
nightmare
ontogenetic fiction
horror vacui
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the origin
of
consciousness and
the coming back
to fear
and
how
to avoid
this threat
perceived -
Why are
we here?
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energy
consumption
goes
into sustaining the
intimacy of
and commitment to
the virtue
of the contents
of experience
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to
be an
expression
of divine grace
pious and
sacred
activity
and
driving the secretion of a group
of neurons
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Death is the termination of the
attitude we take
towards
a high stage
of existence
that
transcends
and contains
both an
aesthetic and extinction.
-------------------------------------------------------
The brain
is characterized by progressive cognitive
deterioration
together with intensified
hunting:
the universe as
an incentive for
the production of
more
efficient
muskets
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SOCRATES: But were we not saying that when a thing has parts, all the parts will be a whole and all?
WITTGENSTEIN: Your question makes no more sense than dazzling science, which I have never pretended to understand.
WITTGENSTEIN: We are dazzled by an ideal and therefore fail to see the actual use of the word clearly.
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Ostracizing Stabilizer
To ostracize, to ostracize, to ostracize, to centralize,
to centralize all while you ostracize,
to centralize the centralizer...
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Write and perform a song (in the style of 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' by Big Joe Turner) about the role of fiction in psychoanalysis while singing 'Fortunate Son' by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Ask the audience to meditate on the theater. Dedicate this piece to people everywhere who are suffering from depression.
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and perceive the supreme hours yourself,
for when you perceive them,
my love,
my insightful brain turns into a generous spontaneity
and an enviable award-winning
leisure.
-------------------------------------------------------
The Outrageous Fingernail Of Me
I will always remember
my Dadaism
joyful unveiling
joyous entertaining
a murderous atheist in the dainty mountain
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still I must know where to look for a dream,
still I must know where to look for a dream
I have assumed that I do not dream myself,
I have assumed here that I do not dream myself,
still I must know where to look for a dream.
I have assumed here that I do not dream myself?
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The choice.
The choice...
Isn't it as though I were choosing?
I no longer have any choice.
I no longer have any choice.
The choice.
But should we also call it justifying an imagined choice?
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embrace
memory's loving voices
the ocean fill'd with joy
for every woman too
and love
dear friend
whoever you are
take this kiss.
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The Desire
I,
unaccustomed to a religious theory,
separated from
any truthful contentment,
exist always underestimating
in a peaceful mind
the nothings.
-------------------------------------------------------
The Need
To light,
to accept,
to underestimate,
to pleasure,
to ease all
while you lighten,
to love a guidance-
did we finally only have a delightful religion?
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Our world depends upon
pessimism
over-grown by the beautiful.
I
am here for
your classic
love...
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There is nothing I hate like a bird,
there is nothing I hate like a bird,
silent in life escape
roaming in thought over the universe
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SOCRATES: Then we must not speak of seeing any more than of not-seeing, nor of any other perception more than of any non-perception, if all things partake of every kind of motion?
JANUSNODE: That makes me think of Nietzsche's point that a casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
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look at a cat when it stalks a bird
portray these acts in words
I mean this
simply invites me to apply the picture I am given
to imagine a form of life
then suddenly I saw it...
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