Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm

Dylan Harris writes "I love writing software, and I enjoy reading other people's source -- how they've expressed instructions, the subtle differences when two good programmers use the same language for the same task. Then there's the pleasure of working through a new computer language: how its structure, its form, changes the way a problem is approached, a solution is expressed. Strange as it may seem, I get the same pleasure from reading poetry, but more so. Seeing a poem written in an old familiar form, say a sonnet, is like meeting someone else's code in a language I know. New poems in new forms are new programs in new languages; exciting ideas renewed, refreshed, expressed in different ways." Read on for Dylan's review of a collection from Loss Pequeno Glazier which combines these worlds of expression.

Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm
author	Loss Pequeno Glazier
pages	100
publisher	Salt
rating	bloody good if you like the stuff
reviewer	Dylan Harris
ISBN	1844710017
summary	Computer infected modern poetry

I can get put off by a lot of avant-garde poetry's excess use of strange words. Take Glazier's newly published first collection Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm. He's succumbed to the usual academic habit of filling his poems with obscure incomprehensibility, like http, chmod, EMACS ... hang on a second, I know these words. They're not literary jargon, they're software babble, the words I work with. If there isn't a schadenfreude sense of humour behind this chap's use of computer terminology in his poetry, there damn well ought to be. I love the image I get of poetry literati, finding poems stuffed with precision from a different kind of language professional, muttering "what the &hellip?"

Look, don't get me wrong, this collection isn't easy. The poems, mostly prose poems, are impressions, sequences of events, themed associations, riddled with puns (sharper than that), observation and humour. Imagine yourself a tourist, walking down a Mexican / Cuban / Texan / Costa Rican town's main street, staring at the activity, the buildings, the air, everything a slap of newness. Now realise I was snug in an English pub on a cold November night drinking some rather good warm beer, reading "Semilla de Calabaza (Pumpkin Seed)," the central sequence of this collection. I'm guided by Glazier, I'm the gawping tourist, I'm hit by his local knowledge, I'm a stranger but I know this town, I'm the visitor and I've lived here forever.

I'd better give you some samples of his work. It's not so easy, each poem is a long whole; chopping bits out destroys the context, much of the expression. Remember, too, I enjoy new ways of saying old things. Perhaps you'll see this collection's appeal to me from this chunk of the fifth "White-Faced Bromeliards on 20 Hectares (An Iteration)":

Finding a pumpkin seed in your vocabulary. A dead tree becomes

a bromeliad alter. Policia Rural. Brahmin cattle. Los Angeles,
Costa Rica's fresh furrows against smoky ridge. Banana chips on
the bus. Una casada, comida tipica lava gushing glowing twilight
plumes & sputters. Before sunset, bathing in a river heated by
lava's flow.

So why on earth am I reviewing a collection of poetry for /. ? As you've probably already sussed, Glazier's a computer chap. He's professor and Director of The Electronic Poetry Center at New York, Buffalo. He knows our not-Unix / Windows wars; they're here in the poetic armoury. It's like having your own private antagonism codified into opera, suddenly there's an aria about DLLs, or caches, and the damn thing works a treat and it damn well shouldn't. It's still his flow of impressions, but now he's taking tourists around our home town, our systems, our neighbourly rows, our familiar world is slapping them with strangeness, they're asking tourist questions, they're got tourist awe, tourist doubts.

From "One Server, One Tablet, and a Diskless Sun":

And what

kind of bugs? Lorca's mystical crickets?
H.D.'s butterflies? Though I think they
must--if the mind does have an eye--be
cockroaches fat, brightly lit, and mightily
glowing. Flying through the mind shaft to
assault any mental indiscretion. Perhaps a
relative of Burroughs introduced this
term. (Stick that in your machine and
add it up!) What vision of mainframe!
What robust modems! What processor
speed!

Some of my worst bugs have embarrassingly been "cockroaches fat, brightly lit, and mightily glowing." I'd better change the subject. It's probably obvious I believe poetry and programming share something vital. As Glazier says, in "Windows 95" (Ironic? You tell me.):

"In a sense code

resembles classical poetry. The requirements of meter (poetry)
and syntax (code) pose both limitations and challenges for the
good poet / programmer to adhere to and overcome in the
process of writing a great poem / program."

The one weakness of this collection, perhaps, cannot be avoided; Glazier's an electronic poet, a web poet; for all his care, the hyperlinks feel like they're still there, hidden and used; the slide-show web pages are unflowing still on paper. Don't get me wrong; these poems work well, but I just get the feeling, which I cannot properly justify, that they're butterflies killed, pinned and collected, fascinating, very beautiful, but their essence is the flittering movement you can never see in a book. But that's not such a problem; you could always browse The Electronic Poetry Center for Glazier's pages.

I didn't know Glazier's work when I bought this collection. It's published by the print-on-demand Australian/UK publisher Salt. I tend to buy their collections simply because they publish them; they seem to have developed the habit of excellence.

---

You can also purchase Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

yikes

I love writing software, and I enjoy reading other people's source

You need to get out more.

Re:yikes

I love writing software, and I enjoy reading other people's source

No, this is just another way of saying he doesn't use Perl. :-)

Get this man to Nevada...

...because he needs the kind of help that only a hooker could give!

Book title in the form of a Slashback headline

The title of this book is in the form of a Slashback headline. I was confused for a moment.

Anatman? Sounds like Pittsburghese

The local radio station had a super hero named: Anatman

People around here sometimes say: Anat at the end of their sentences, short for and that. Which is the same as: and stuff.

Whatcha do?

I went down to Primani Bros, Ride Aid, anat.

Yinz definately need to learn a new language if you come in our neck of the woods.

Re:Anatman? Sounds like Pittsburghese

Actually, it's the Sanskrit name for the Buddhist doctrine of no-self or no-soul. Atman is the self/soul, and An is the negation of that.

• Anatman [wikipedia.org]

Disclaimer: IANAB (I am not a Buddhist).

um...

Glazier's an electronic poet, a web poet

This sounds like a Geocities homepage to me...

While I can relate to the topic ...

.. This is going to be hard to explain to a cute, blonde Litterature Art student in a bar.

With apologies to Ogden Nash

I think I shall never see
A program as lovely as a tree.
In fact, without a program call
I'll never see a tree at all.

Wrong apologee...

You'll want to be sending that apology to Alfred Joyce Kilmer, not Ogden Nash.

What makes UNIX users are so smart

This kind of reminds me of an essay I read many years ago, about UNIX people, literature, and the command-line. Here's a link if you're interested:

The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
by Thomas Scoville
http://www.insecure.org/stf/scoville_unix_as_liter ature.txt [insecure.org]

Wow

Hi,

I guess the submitter coded too much in his life, because now he is mixing things up.

Coding is about structuring, and poetry too has structures, indeed. This is a shallow comparison. For the whole thing, pardoxically, in poetry, is to give the reader enough freedom to free him(her)self of the structure.

In poetry, structure is a mean, an assurance you take to get free quicker ; in computing, structure is *everything*. Poetry and computing are so different. Computing looks like more architectural works. Definitely coders are not poets ; in that case, they *would* be poets.

Regards,
jdif

An ode to Glazier

My brain's hard drive spins on its axis,
anti clock wise.
Penetrating poetry pokes my peripheral vision
like a fully charged capacitor on a hot summer day
My eyes glaze over Glazier's prose
His profound instructions verbose
in machine language, almost
optimized for O(1) execution on a fast Althon
crippled by the superslow multitasking windows OS,
Yet, continue to register their keys,
in my hashtable of memories.

Smooth Jive, Daddio

Bah, this poetry stuff isn't hard. I'll give you one.

Programmer's Solitude
by illuminata

Cold, snow
winter breeze blow
at home desk, sorrow.

No love comes to the programmer
no matter how good his code.
Internally crumbling
about to implode.

Couples happy
streets alive.
Not the programmer
dead inside.

The right hand is warm
but dangerous.
For that hand prevents love.
But in return, gives instant gratification.

Why not?
Never very attractive
no female attention
only apprehension.

On a lonely winter's day
do not approach the programmer.
You know where that hand has been.
And the programmer never works all day.

Helpful, if circular ratings=helpful, if circular

rating: bloody good if you like the stuff

So your evaluation is "only you can evaluate it?" My enjoyment of the book will be proportional to my enjoyment of the book! Thanks!

Interesting title...

The three-item format of the title reminds me strongly of the format used by Haruki Murakami in "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" - every other chapter, the chapter's title would have a three-phrase structure - some examples would be "Elevator, Silence, Overweight," and "Appetite, Disappointment, Leningrad."

Vogon vibe

While I do like poetry and such, I'm getting a uncomfortably Vogon vibe from this guy's stuff. For the unwashed heathens among us, the following is taken from Douglas Adams' _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_:

Oh freddled gruntbuggly
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don't!

Honestly, if you, in the spirit of semirandom recombination that seems to characterize a good deal of Glazier's work, take the nonsense words and add in random techno-jargon, you'd get a very Glazier-y and equally unsatisfying verse. Jargon-wielding for what appears to be its own sake doesn't make for nerd-digestible poetry. So yes, while I applaud the experimental nature of some of his stuff, I don't much like it.

Eh?

Can someone please explain to me where this comparison between code and poetry began? It makes absolutely no sense to me. I've never understood the notion that code is art. Creative, sure... but art?

Ahhh, home!!

Finding a pumpkin seed in your vocabulary. A dead tree becomes a bromeliad alter. Policia Rural. Brahmin cattle. Los Angeles, Costa Rica's fresh furrows against smoky ridge. Banana chips on the bus. Una casada, comida tipica lava gushing glowing twilight plumes & sputters. Before sunset, bathing in a river heated by lava's flow. Ahhh, home!! Can't wait to have some casado and banana chips..

Poetry is Like Code?

Yea, but would you want your local nuclear power plant running off some old japanese nantucket haiku jingle? Yea, I didn't think so.

IDEA!!!

If you make that kind of comparison, can we patent poem ideas?

More poetry...

<>!*''#
^@`$$-
*!'$_
%*<>#4
&)../
{~|**SYSTEM HALTED

waka waka bang splat tick tick hash
carat at back-tick dollar dollar dash
splat bang tick dollar underscore
percent splat waka waka number four
ampersand right-paren dot dot slash
curly bracket tilde pipe splat splat crash

Taken from the 1337/poetry [berkeley.edu] section of william wu's site [berkeley.edu]

read it out loud

While I'm not familiar with 'Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm', I have read much of Glazier's work. His writing can be difficult to parse, but to see/hear Loss read from his own work is quite inspiring.

Often the text he performs will be projected on a screen behind him. In 'Bromeliads' or 'Vis Etudes' for example, where the text modulates mid-sentence, or where there is no established syntax for sequencing each node, the activity of reading becomes obvious - even a little exciting.

It's great to see Glazier get a little attention. If you enjoy the writing even a little bit, try to catch him at a reading.

mmm

Some of my worst bugs have embarrassingly been "cockroaches fat, brightly lit, and mightily glowing." I'd better change the subject.

Man I could sure go for a fat glowing roach right now.

Avant-Guard poetry?

Words, related by concepts hidden
Only author knows their meaning:
A shiny toaster, cherry tree,
IBM 360, PIC, my little sister's doll house.
Perhaps too stupid, me.
But perhaps words beyond comprehension,
certainly beyond communication.

code poetry

!do{gentle->night(good)}

Wait, that was Dylan Thomas. Nevermind.

Fruitcake

This guy's description of reading code is just a litte too fruity. Bet he wanders around coin-op laundries sniffing other people's underwear.

code poetry in abundance

there are lot's of writers/coders interested in merging literature with programming languages. Stuff that usually goes way more extreme then this. or to quote a star of the genre who goes by the name of lo_y:

"[Tr-s]
Hut=0-Ignamb=So\OGSTARY\832T
R-0-r-io= ID
_RSH.wap=Y
[S]ID=10dB=f
Nve Scie=i
E=0,100=,
[01]InfoI=n
MPOn=e
5=Bl=se
= [Yes]ID==2 ,0-DIR=C:\
Ud.t+P=el=
Item4=BO=St-
M.cesIt=Rig
==Pla
D=te"

have a look at this lill' overview of this genre with links to more...

http://socialfiction.org/als_daneng.html

Some favorite technology poems:

Charles Bukowski
from You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense, 1986, p 103

16-Bit Intel 8088 Chip

with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

==

Richard Brautigan
from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, 1968

At the California Institute of Technology

I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are: I'm bored.

It's been raining like hell all day long
and there's nothing to do.

Written January 24, 1967
while poet-in-residence at
the California Institute of
Technology.

==

Ah, sonnets

As The Bard himself put it:

If (Rnd(1) >= 0.5) then

If (thee >= summer's_day) then
thou = (more_lovely AND more_temperate)
Endif
Endif

(...stand by for the code nazis...)

Kurbis Kernol

Sorry, thought the USians had come to their senses and had found the superior oil for salads. However I see they still wallow in their ignorance. 'tis a shame....

Ode to QuickSort

Hey could you write me a beautiful poem about quicksort in c++ and get it to me before 5:00 pm tomorrow?

Um ... this goes only so far ...

I've studied poetry, written some, and taken it seriously of my own free will, despite that as an English major at UCI I'm required to do so in order to finish my degree.

I make a living as a coder, though, and I've noticed many similarities between code and poetry, especially between code and the poetry of the so-called "language" poets whose poetry depends on visual appreciation of the physical layout of the words on the page in order to be understood.

There are some significant differences, however, between poetry and code that, to my mind, limit the comparison.

One, in order for code to be interesting, it must be correct, that is, solve the problem it was meant to solve. If it's not correct then it's just a collection of symbols and keywords and, while a language poet might be interested in such a collection for the purposes of expression, it's not going to have much value as code.

Poetry, on the other hand ... must also be correct. And this is where the main difference lies, oddly. In great poetry there is a limited number of interpretations. Great poems may mean any number of a set of things, but they won't, and shouldn't, mean anything. And the meaning in poetry is "encoded", if you will, within the constraints of meter, rhythm, structure, rhyme (if any), vocabulary, subject, ideas, allusions, sound, and intended audience, to name some of the principal things.

So, between code having to be correct for its purposes in order to be interesting, and poetry having to be "correct" within its constraints, there's going to be a seriously limited subset of "code poems", if any at all, that legitimately cross over into both domains.

As I was reading the examples, I was in serious doubt that this poetry had much use to the "geek crowd" outside of using a few words like "Emacs" and "modem". So what. Even the reviewer says that this isn't "easy" poetry. Okay. So it's not easy. But is it any good?

Ode to SCO

main(once, was)
{
a = unix_owner;
who(pulled, a, PR_BONER) {
they->staked_out[some_claims && called(ppl_names)];
}
but_everyone_knew(darl, was, a, stoner);
}

/* all rights reserved, SCO Software, Poetry, Music and Literary Group */

/* method of using black text on white background is trade secret, patent pending */

Re:Short poem

if hope(horny(you))
fuck(you);
else
pub_crawl();