The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed

Danny the Moneydick introduced me to The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed this week. An enchantingly quirky compilation of prose and poetry, the book was "written by" the 1983 computer program Racter (short for raconteur), programmed by William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter to generate sophisticated English prose. While it is questionable as to whether Racter wrote the entire book itself without the influence of a human helper, the written work still retains a certain charm and is worth a look. Plus, the illustrations by Joan Hall are nutty to boot! This poem and illustration, par exemple:

Slide and tumble and fall among
The dead. Here and there
Will be found a utensil.

Neat! Thanks Danny!

Comments

[Geoffrey A. Landis]

FYI, I linked to your post here in my discussion of automatic poetry at the Clevelandpoetics blog, clevelandpoetics.blogspot.com/2009/06/policemans-beard-auto-poetry-part-2.html

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Geoffrey A. Landis
http://www.geoffreylandis.com