Some of you may remember the "Google Poems" I wrote in December of 2003. For those of you who don’t, the first one was called Carny Knowledge. The evening I wrote the poem, I had found out that my sister’s alcoholic boyfriend was a "carny."
I wanted to find out what was up with carnies. So I went to Google and typed in carney. I then started a poem and began to cut and paste (as in William Burroughs "cut up method" inspired by Brion Gyson).
I began to realize that using Google to pluck out associations of words or ideas is similar to the idea in psychology that one of the cognitive processes of creativity of associative thinking. Google supplies quite remote associations of any idea along with lots of web verbiage at no extra cost.
Carny Knowledge is unlike any poem I have written because of its density of words. The experience of writing it was liberating because until then I had felt that all too many words were being blogged onto the Internet. But now I had found a use for them.
I tried another Google poem a bit later that month called Optimism 1. Then I decided to get back on my dissertation and not wander so much.
Tonight I found out that someone had not only taken up the cause of Google poetics but had actually automated the process. So rather than spoil the freshness of the experience, I suggest you try and write on using the "Google Poem Generator."
Updated: A bit of seridipity is at work tonight. Is there nothing new under the sun? Maybe the Burroughs-Gyson Non-Linear Adding Machine.
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