Re the Audubon and the Nantucket Gangplank:
Whoever wrote these is on thin ice, using obscurity to question the need for obscurity. The first poem especially reminds me in a weird way of George Herbert's "Jordan"--I sense in each a tone of complaint at the same time that each betrays a degree of attachment to the very qualities of verse about which he(she) complains.
Has anyone here, by the way, tried out the Turing Test associated with Raymond Kurzweil's cybernetic poetry generator? It's not altogether satisfying, but it's reassuring to see how far computers still are from being able to counterfeit (or authentically create) sense convincingly. The test does, however, leave one slightly saddened at the failure of certain HUMAN poets (Kurzweil himself included) to counterfeit sense convincingly.
-Peter
|