Education: Programmed Poetry

O poet,

Blush like a rotted skin;

Brighten like a dusty tower;

Wail like a happy earthworm;

Dream like an enormous flood;

Tremble like a red locomotive;

Flop like a damp gate! . . .

The beaches are praying.

Listen! How they stifle their enormous

lips! . . . The river Winks And I am ravished.

Poetasters may now join the technologically unemployed: these freaky fragments belong to The Meditation of IBM 7094-7040 DCS, the masterwork of a computer. It is flawed poetry, full of silly similes and mixed metaphors. Still, Yale English Professor Marie Borroff has undeniably...