Digital Found Poetry: Google Poetics

[primeideal]

 Another Tumblr blog that is up-front about its found poetry also employs a very popular website, but relies on users to send in the poems they find. I speak of Google Poetics, a site that groups together (usually four, or sometimes several sets of four) lines that result from the same attempts at a Google Autocomplete.

 

In my opinion, these can actually be interpreted pretty well by intentional poetic standards. Like many good poems, they have some elements of formal structure--in this case, usually a repetitive beginning to each line. But they also are full of surprises--the first three might set up a pattern that the fourth breaks, the last line might cause you to interpret the others in a new light, and so forth. The importance of "lineation" and surprising but meaningful line breaks is key.

 

For instance, the search term "Would any" prompts...

 

would anyone care if i died

would anyone miss me

would anybody die for me

would anyone care for a bon bon

 

While,  "what will h" prompts...

 

what will humans look like in the future

what will happen in the future

what will happen to canadian pennies

what will happen to all the pennies

 

Because Google picks up on alternate spellings or contractions of words, sometimes the exact formal repetition breaks down.

 

one day we will a

one day we will all be free

one day we will all die

one day we'll all be ghosts

one day we'll all understand lyrics.

 

(Which is, in my view, much improved if you don't know that "one day we'll all understand" is itself a lyric that people are curious about. Instead I thought "eh, in the present time some of us fail to understand lyrics to songs in general. But things will get better, down the line!")

 

Seeing some autocomplete results can also inspire you to try alternate search entries, which leads to "longform" poems of sets of searches pieces together. The curators, so far as I know, are a little stingier about how many of these they post. But I'm not sure. Again, it's part of the magic of Google that existential longings are mixed right in with pop music lyrics--sometimes uncited. As above, I think it might be funnier if you don't know which is which.

 

Yesterday

 

Bluebird

 

Here's the FAQ page. Like the Times Haiku, they post in image form--in this case, direct screenshots of the Google drop-down box. I do think this form is a little more entertaining than the haiku.

 

If you like funny autocomplete results, there are a couple fun non-poetic backlogs around the internet... US States map and Sporcle Quizzes for countries of the world and Shakespeare characters.

Comments

[luzula]

These are pretty cool! I'm enjoying your posts.

[infiniteandsmall]

These are my favorite kind of found poetry.

[lnhammer]

Oh wow -- someone else does this, and for more than just the amusement factor.

---L.

[habite]

I could (and have) spend hours doing this. I think it might be my favourite type of found poetry, some of the results you can get are really great.

[jjhunter]

I just discovered there's a fandom-specific version of this: AO3's tag autocomplete suggestions.

Copperbadge's screenshot of 'parenting' [link goes to Tumblr]

parenting [...]

Odin's A+ Parenting
Bad Parenting
John Winchester's Bad Parenting
Odin's Parenting
Odin's Bad Parenting
Thorin's A+ Parenting
Laufey's A+ Parenting
John Winchester's A+ Parenting
Odin's Good Parenting
Howard Stark's Bad Parenting
John Winchester's Good Parenting
Howard Stark's A+ Parenting
Laufey's Good Parenting