{"id":1518,"date":"2003-07-25T15:23:04","date_gmt":"2003-07-26T05:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/07\/25\/darwinian-poetry\/"},"modified":"2019-12-05T13:10:45","modified_gmt":"2019-12-05T21:10:45","slug":"darwinian-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/07\/25\/darwinian-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Darwinian Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:13955,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/0871401525\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/0871401525\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13956,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.codeasart.com\\\/poetry\\\/darwin.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.codeasart.com\\\/poetry\\\/darwin.html&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13957,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/damon.typepad.com\\\/hollow\\\/2003\\\/07\\\/darwinian_poetr.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>First off, a disclaimer: in general, poetry is just not my thing. The only poet I&#8217;ve ever really enjoyed reading is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0871401525\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"e. e. cummings Complete Poems 1904-1962\">e. e. cummings<\/a>, very rarely has any other poetry caught my eye.<\/p>\n<p>That said, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.codeasart.com\/poetry\/darwin.html\" title=\"Darwinian Poetry\">Darwinian Poetry<\/a> project that Chris Boese <a href=\"http:\/\/damon.typepad.com\/hollow\/2003\/07\/darwinian_poetr.html\" title=\"Code as Art?\">mentioned<\/a> caught my eye, and sounds like a really fun little experiment. So, what&#8217;s Darwinian Poetry?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Ok, here&#8217;s the idea: starting with a whole bunch (specifically 1,000) randomly generated groups of words (our &#8220;poems&#8221;), we are going to subject them to a form of natural selection, killing off the &#8220;bad&#8221; ones and breeding the &#8220;good&#8221; ones with each other. If enough generations go by, and if the gene pool is rich enough, we should eventually start to see interesting poems emerge.<\/p>\n<p>  The cool part is that YOU are the arbiter of what constitutes &#8220;good&#8221; and &#8220;bad&#8221; poetry. Once you start, you will be presented with two poems. In all likelihood they will both be abysmal pieces of nonsensical garbage. That&#8217;s ok. All you have to do is read them both and pick the one you find more appealing, for whatever reason. Your decision might be based on a single word that you happen to like. It doesn&#8217;t matter. Just pick whichever one strikes your fancy.<\/p>\n<p>  Once you choose a poem, your vote will be recorded and two more poems will appear. Keep doing this for as long as you like, and definitely come back frequently.<\/p>\n<p>  Over time the poems picked by you, and I hope by thousands of other people, will interbreed and more and more interesting poems will emerge. It could take a while. Weeks&#8230;months&#8230;I don&#8217;t know. It all depends on how many people participate, and how often.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The funny thing is, after clicking through a few, I&#8217;ve seen some that are entirely nonsensical, and others that rank right up there with some of the &#8220;official&#8221; poetry I&#8217;ve read.<\/p>\n<p>But then, given my aforementioned views on poetry, that may not be saying much. ;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First off, a disclaimer: in general, poetry is just not my thing. The only poet I&#8217;ve ever really enjoyed reading is e. e. cummings, very rarely has any other poetry caught my eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2028],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-1518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-links"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}