Software for Poets (Was: Re: Text-to-speech)

[Francis Girard]

This is about poetry. I think the next reply should be done privately unless 
someone else is interested in it.

Hi,

Le dimanche 20 Mars 2005 23:04, Paul Rubin a écrit :
> Francis Girard <francis.girard at free.fr> writes:
> > 4- Propose a synonym that will fit in a verse, i.e. with the right amount
> > of syllabs
> >
> > 5- Suggest a missing word or expression in a verse by applying the
> > Shannon text generation principle
> > ...
> > First, do you think it may be a useful tool ?
> > What other features you think can make it usefull for a poet ?
>
> I'm skeptical of this notion.  You can think of writing a poem as
> building up a tree structure where there's a root idea you're trying
> to express, "branches" in the choices of images/comparisons/etc. that
> you use to express the idea, and "leaves" that are the actual words in
> the poem.  Rhyme means that a left-to-right traversal of the leaves
> (i.e. reading the words) results in a pattern with a certain
> structure.  You're proposing a tool that helps explore the search
> space in the nodes near the bottom level of the tree, to find words
> with the right characteristics.
>
> I think the constraint of rhyme and meter is best served by widening
> the search space at the upper levels of the tree and not the lower
> levels.  That is, if you've got an image and you don't find rhyming
> words for it with easy natural diction, a computerized search for more
> and more obscure words to express that image in rhyme is the last
> thing you want.  

Absolutly right.

> Rather, you want to discard the image and choose a 
> different one to express the idea.  That means seeking more images by 
> mentally revisiting and staying inside the emotion at the center of
> poem, a much more difficult thing to do than solving the mere math
> problem of finding a string of rhyming words with similar semantics to
> a non-rhyming sequence that you already have.  

Again, right. Your description comes very close to my own experience of 
writing poems and I never read something as clear as what I'm reading here. 
Poetry practice is described most of the time in poetic terms just like 
religion is described in religious terms. And one has to impregnate himself 
with these words to, little by little, gain some understanding of it. Your 
description proves that it is possible to describe it otherwise. I am truly 
marvelled.

The question is : how do you discard the image to choose another one ? How 
this process takes place ? I observed myself while writing a poem (I, myself, 
may not be good example since I am certainly not a good poet) and discovered 
that it is while playing with the words, trying to find the right one, with 
the right number of syllabs, that I discover a new image, and re-write the 
whole verse, even re-arranging the whole strophe or poem. My goal with the 
two last tasks (4 and 5) was to help the poor guy struggling with the words, 
not to produce the correct final verse, but only to help him in one of the 
phase of his writing.

> But when you find the
> right image, the words and rhythm fall into place without additional
> effort.
>

I don't believe much in this. Poetry and writing in general is work, work, 
work and more work.

> This is why writing good poems is hard, and is also why the results of
> doing it well is powerful.  I don't think it can be programmed into a
> computer using any current notions.

Again right. My goal, of course, is not to substitute the poet by a computer. 
Only help him in some of his mechanical tasks.

Regards

Francis Girard