Posted by Justin Walduck on July 27, 2003 at 19:38:08:
I have just seen several two word poems. Are they evolutionary dead ends?
It is easy for two words to make sense or resonate. Especially when compared to groupings of a larger number of words that make no sense.
Spliting up two words effectively destroys the poem that was. You are left with none of the traits of the parent in the children. Does this really reflect evolution?
Two word poems, especially popular ones, would tend to persist and over generations force down the word counts of their children.
Someone has already noted in these messages that 9 of the 10 most popular poems are now quite short. Is this a continuing trend? Given all the poems started with the same number of words it would be interesting to see the current spread of word counts.
Have you considered making poems under a certain word count "unviable"?