Poetastry Cheat Sheet 2005-11-20

Probably better (for human creativity) if no one ever builds them, but surely I’m not the first to think of the following online prostheses for poetasters:

(1) A straight rhyme-grepper (words that rhyme with…)

(2) An alliteration-grepper (words that begin with…)

(3) Combining (1) and (2) with a thesaurus (grep only words that mean something like…)

(4) Metric constraints could easily be plugged in too

(5) And machine-aided metaphor

The reason it’s probably better if would-be poets stay away from such devices is that necessity is the mother of invention, and the brain is such that once it senses that it can off-load a task onto another device, it no longer rises to the occasion. And then versification becomes just a multiple-choice exercise…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.