Second Critique

Forgot to hand this in during class but here it is.

Angel Cruz

Dr. Klobucar

Electronic Writing Workshop

3-5-12

Anthony Misistia’s eGnoetry

Anthony discussed in his blog assignment entry that he hates and loves eGnoetry equally. The mix of randomly generating lines as well as the ability to change or alter certain words in the piece seems to be a bit much for Anthony to handle, at least to begin with. Once he got accustomed to the program he felt that he was no longer butchering the original authors work, but making his own electronic version of it. His latest dabble with eGnoetry produced this:

And
farther
whiles I refuse
‘but heavens would wish to take
place.
I saw this remark and alligators sunned themselves.

          Based on the grammar from the given work, you can tell that the work is generated. The actual algorithm in the generator itself is a mystery to me, but for some reason it decided to give him this stanza with a very little amount of words. I feel that this aids in the poems ability to provide a subtle but precise answer. It’s because of the final product, the two sentences, that the poem becomes a kind of conversation with the reader.

The first sentence is speaking of an event that wishes to occur, the heavens taking place, and then the fact that the remark itself made alligators sun themselves. It’s an interesting affect because personally, I know alligators sunbathe to increase their body heat since they can’t directly control their temperature. Anthony must have chosen the words to change in order to make two sentences that at least slightly make sense. What we get then, is a reason for the alligators to go and sunbathe.

The first sentence ends up sounding like someone, the narrator, is refusing the heavens from taking place even though they wish to. It’s an interesting affect especially if you at least know some religion. You know that god created the heavens and that only he should really have control over it, and now this narrator is speaking about refusing their existence and honestly that would give me chills. It would seem that this has also caused some type of decrease in the alligator’s body heat. At least that’s what I make of the lines.

He didn’t really mention how many times he clicked to change the words, or which words were changed so I can’t really say how much of the originally “random,” generated, poem he changed. Personally, I felt he could change maybe two more words to better the sentence. Those words, in my opinion, would be “whiles” and         “ ‘but.” They just annoy me, as the reader because they are grammatically incorrect and since I know about the program and his ability to change it, I just kind of hoped he would have.

As far as patterns, I can’t really say I see any. Again, this goes back to not knowing the algorithm in which the generator produces poems. Even when I created my own using this generator, it came up with a random number of lines and words in each line as well.

The piece itself works fairly well, as I mentioned before. The fact that it has two sentences makes it a sort of cause and effect situation. It may also just be that the second line is so powerful and grammatically correct, that it completes the poem. I personally really like it, and what makes this even better is the fact that I know no one else could randomly generate the same poem. Or at least they’d really have to try hard and figure out what he did to get what he got.