Posted by The Rumbling God on July 26, 2003 at 22:57:08:
A thought related to the discussion of whether computer generated poetry is equivalent to poetry by hand:
Normally poetry is valued for, among other things, originality. But as the most successful poetry "genes" here are the most copied, successful evolutionary poetry is by definition unoriginal.
And might this entail some kind of dialectic of choice, i e that a popular phrase (such as "sometime the life loved", which really is bad poetry) first peaks, then becomes boring, because too common, and then not chosen. Rather crudely put, that. Sorry.