Digital found poem is a random poetry generator that tosses tens of thousands of snippets of language (words, phrases, clauses) into the air, then drops them programmatically onto the computer screen into five stanzas of ever-changing text. The text of digital found poem does not--cannot--present a narrative--does not--cannot--tell a story. Instead, it presents a never-ending interior monologue of a narrator rambling about what heshethey thinks, feels, sees, remembers, etc., interspersed occasionally with a semblance of dialog between the narrator and a significant other. Digital found poem also plays around with a title for each screenful of text, pretending that the words are from actual poets. This is just a tongue-in-cheek thing to try to keep things interesting.
The poems digital found poem generates are not always coherent or logical, but syntactically, they hang together pretty well, and as such they are very readable and may even be enjoyable to those who take it for what it is--random poetry. And the good thing is that if digital found poem generates a poem you dislike, you can just click a button and--poof--it's gone, to be replace by what will hopefully be a better one.
If you're intrigued by how a computer can be used to generate poems, give digital found poem a try and see if by pure chance (that's called aleatory, isn't it), it will generate a poem for you that you'll find worth your while.
If you're a poetry teacher and are looking for a way to spice up your poetry writing class or workshop, digital found poem may just be the tool you're looking for. Let students play with digital found poem, shaping and molding words and lines that they see poetic potential in and discarding the rest. For a beginning poet, thirty minutes of tinkering with text provided may be a more enjoyable and productive way to start each writing day than to have to stare at that proverbial blank page and hoping that somehow the words will come.
The user interface (UI) of digital found poem looks as follows. Click the generate new poetic text button and you'll get a completely new text to read or play with.
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