
Poetry for Hackers: A crab canon for Douglas Hofstadter - patrickas
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/06/a-crab-canon-for-douglas-hofstadter.html
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bambax
Neat idea. My try:

Unbelievable!

He found

on the tired sofa an image

with his ex girlfriend,

a strange and worn-out pillow,

and he cried; he longed for

a strange and worn-out pillow

with his ex girlfriend

on the tired sofa; an image

he found

unbelievable.

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biot
If you liked that, play the game Braid (<http://braid-game.com>). I won't give
any spoilers, but it's a $9.95 purchase so just go out and buy it already. :)

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patrickas
That's strange but I never made the connection until you mentioned it! Braid
is one of my all time favorite games too!

Edit: And as of yesterday it is available in the Ubuntu software center.

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danms
Thanks a lot for the heads up on Braid being available through Ubuntu software
center, I just bought and installed it now - lovely game.

Lovely poem as well. I really enjoyed "I Am a Strange Loop", guess I should
get around to reading GEB as well.

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TeMPOraL
A beautiful poem. Also, GEB is a great book.

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Fargren
The spanish translation of that chapter of GEB was not enjoyable, sadly
enough.

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riffraff
Strange, I came here to say the italian version was pretty good :)

This may be a function of the author being a(n impressively) fluent speaker of
the language, though on the other hand the translation of Carrol's Jabberwocky
poem in the book is terrible.

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thesteamboat
I believe he was using other people's translations. (At least, in the English
version, he compared it to other's French and German translations.)

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michael_dorfman
That was a very nice poem, but these kinds of things are actually not all that
hard, if you are willing to play with them long enough. I once wrote a
palindrome that was a rhymed quatrain-- it took about a week of fiddling, if I
recall correctly.

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patricklynch
[Insert any creative work or admirable skill here] is actually not all that
hard, if you are willing to play with it long enough.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Sure, but some are harder than others.

My point is that composing something like this is more akin to solving a
crossword puzzle than to composing a symphony.

As I said, a week of fiddling will get you a (letter-by-letter) palindrome of
four lines, at least in my experience.

~~~
jpadvo
In terms of satisfying the technical demands of the form, yes. But creating a
work with evocative punch like this poem has is more akin to composing a
symphony.

