Poetastry Cheat Sheet

(Stevan Harnad) — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 19:13:43 +0000

Probably better (for human creativity) if no one ever builds them, but surely I'm not the first to think of the following online prostheses for poetasters:

(1) A straight rhyme-grepper (words that rhyme with...)

(2) An alliteration-grepper (words that begin with...)

(3) Combining (1) and (2) with a thesaurus (grep only words that mean something like...)

(4) Metric constraints could easily be plugged in too

(5) And machine-aided metaphor

The reason it's probably better if would-be poets stay away from such devices is that necessity is the mother of invention, and the brain is such that once it senses that it can off-load a task onto another device, it no longer rises to the occasion. And then versification becomes just a multiple-choice exercise...

Skywritings - virtual patents

Poetastry Cheat Sheet