Short Poem Saturday – Second Fig – Millay

ESVMepigram_try2
A Saturday morning spent playing around with photo collages and a cheeky Edna St. Vincent Millay epigram is time well spent, I say!

Have a wonderful weekend, enjoy the collage, and perhaps be inspired by these three links:

1) Ms. Chiara Ricci-Tam, my friend and collaborator in science as well as art, has started her own WordPress Blog! I have been like a broken record over the last two years telling her that the folks on WP are some of the best there are, and that I have made new friends and connected with amazing artists, authors, and poets here. Now she’s here too –  and so, if you don’t mind, click on over to her brand new site Chiaroscurale and say hello!

2) Wave Erasure Books – a vibrant conversation on Twitter, started by Beat Company, reminded me of this awesome site and the one below. You (or the program if you click “random poem”) can erase words from classic texts to create something entirely new. You can also submit your erasure creations to their website to be added to the online collection.

3) Howl your work – this program will take any line you provide and “Howl with it.” I don’t think there is any other way to explain other than to show the results. I put today’s epigram into the algorithm, and this is what popped out:

safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
America upon safe roof street after we’re Passaic, caresses
rocking Long suicide, singing Spaniard sanity radio rose fate were
returning hands to twelve gas a soul trucks governments! Bridge a not
demonic Chinatown the together of up Moloch who entered my soul early!
Moloch in whom Light streaming out of the actual pingpong of the moon
& their hands & a hung jury, and harlequin speech of suicide,
demanding instantaneous

Behold the power of random chance, computer algorithms, and Howl by Alan Ginsberg!

22 comments

  1. How does one subscribe to your friend’s posts so I can get them in my inbox as I do yours? I bookmarked the site but that means I’ll forget it’s there until late at night/early morn I can’t sleep & decide to see what I’ve been bookmarking. Thx!

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    1. I just went and checked, and she must not have enabled the “email follow” feature. I dropped her a note mentioning it – so hopefully she will turn it on. I remember when I first started out on WordPress, I just went through and clicked everything (!), so I’ve forgotten what is standard and what features you have to enable!

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    2. She just added that option! If you click on the little menu icon in the upper right hand corner (the three parallel lines), the follow by email button is there. Thanks for catching that!

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      1. I think i did just what you described purely by accident before reading your latest posting on your site. Anyway, I subscribed to something!

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  3. The Company found yet another «Word-Generator»: In this case it is something called «passweird» and it generates «single-word-poetry» – if one may call it poetry at all …

    It can be accesed and used here.

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  5. Enjoyed the collage. Some quirky shapes coming out of the border, yet very effective. The bottom one reminds me of Stonehenge being built. Ha ha!

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  6. Mine was:

    vulnerable won’t help
    you in Rockland where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
    rades all together singing the final stanzas of where we are great
    writers on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx I’m with
    you in Rockland where you pun on the impulse of winter midnight
    street light smalltown rain, seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed
    the and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to

    ♫ thanks, happy find, this

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Despite their poverty – the hipsters attain a measure of freedom in their imaginations. In their minds.

        And Allen was one of them – floating. Seeking unity with nature and the ecstasy of music & poetry.

        Liked by 1 person

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