Pentametron, my twitter poetry engine, is now online! An experiment in finding inadvertent art in the internet’s endless outpouring of language, pentametron automatically collects twitter posts that happen to be in iambic pentameter. It processes about five million tweets per day, and finds a few dozen iambic lines in that time.
You can follow pentametron’s work in realtime at the twitter feed – @pentametron – or read the collected sonnets at pentametron.com, updated several times per hour.
RT @ginafbabey Thanks for the love and Karma is a bitch. RT @Lweeeeeezy I try and find the good in everyone. RT @ItsMe_Shay_P Some females really get beside themselves RT @6thRosePetals So super disappointed with myself. RT @mordemmy It doesn't really matter anymore. RT @nisaeee This drama motivated me a lot! 안구정화 짱!! RT @jayylyrics she always gotta ruin something good RT @Teeyaanur wow gonna do the #lin tonight again.. RT @TerrySupplyCo I really wanna skate a empty pool. RT @J18mcevoy I wanna see the hunger games tonight RT @IamJabariJ I'M SO EXCITED FOR THE HUNGER GAMES! RT @valerieward95 Wait, does The Hunger Games premiere tonight? RT @_SyMoan Not Even Gonna Entertain The Thought RT @breeannie Last practice of the season. #bittersweet
This isn’t my first effort at crowd-sourcing sonnets through the internet: I organized the Exquisite Sonnet Project almost 20 years ago (!) and did a similar project through twitter for the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2009. But this is the first one that’s entirely automated — and in which the contributors don’t even know they’re participating.
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A random monkey sonnet composed entirely of the first fourteen random rhyming tweets from Pentametron with the line order changed and punctuation added:
Who’s going to the fashion show tonight?
I have a feeling something isn’t right.
No point in crying over yester-day,
I’ll run towards the problem, not away.
I’m not a morning person anymore —
I’ve never cheated on a girl before.
She’s hotter than a summer day in hell!
It’s like a mini house in this hotel.
Good morning, everybody, rise and grind!
Change for the good and leave the bad behind.
Let your imagination flow away!
I wanna watch The Hunger Games today.
Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave,
Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.
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I wish I had a megaphone to tell people about this project. Kudos.
Most people, when they see the “=” sign,
Read “equals”, but Pentametron declines
To allocate it syllable or stress.
Please fix this bug. (No pressure. No duress.)
Any change your algorithm is open source?
Two improvement requests:
(1) Pentametron just decided that “i really hate apologizing, ugh
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This is such an awesome project! Echoing “Andrew,” will you make the code available at all?
Amazing. Thank you.
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This is an amazing bot! I came across it in my search for machine iambic pentameter detection, as I have decided to write a programming language that has English language syntax and must be in iambic pentameter to compile. Any chance you could perhaps share the code that went into Pentametron? I’ve been having difficulties coming up with a reliable method of pronouncing words, matching rhymes, and finding stress patterns, and this would assist me greatly! If you can’t share the code for whatever reason, could you indicate roughly how you did it, or give me any suggestions that may come to mind?
Thanks!
Charlie
Hi Charlie –
I’m afraid the code is too messy and embarrassing to share, but I described most of the secrets in this article:
http://gawker.com/5905550/weird-internets-the-amazing-found+on+twitter-sonnets-of-pentametron
and in my talk at Dorkbot earlier this year:
https://vimeo.com/63178432
I love it! Is there any place where we can see the results of the 2009’s version (Brooklyn Museum)? Thank you in advance!
Hello Elena –
You can read the archive of the museum’s 1stfans twitter feed at http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/support/1stfans_twitter_art_feed.php – including all the other monthly artists’ projects. And the result of the Brooklyn Museum collaborative sonnet is here: