Poetry, evolution, and life

What does poetry tell us about ourselves?

What does it tell us about the authors?

What if everything you thought you knew about poetry could be both confirmed, and called into question all at the same time?

So many of us believe that poetry is for the author, and in part, maybe it’s true. That’s why we write, isn’t it? For ourselves? To get these errant thoughts and feelings out of our minds, and to share them freely with others; to identify with them, to hope they understand us, and to help them understand themselves.

Why read poetry? We read poetry for many of the same reasons that the authors write it. We feel understood, we identify with the author, we see a part of ourselves, we know beauty.

We are so secure in our understanding of what poetry is, and why we read and write it. At its core is our humanity, our feeling, and our thought that draws us to poems and poetry.

What if you encountered something that turned your understanding of poetry on its ear? What if that something stopped you in your tracks, and really made you think about the world, and yourself, as you know them? Are you prepared for that?

Allow me to indulge you…

http://darwinianpoetry.com/servlet/VotingServlet

Go there… you will be presented with two poems, and it asks you to vote. Forget who wrote them for a moment, and just read them. How do they make you feel? Do you identify with the author? Do you feel understood? Does it have the same affect as other poetry on you? Is it beautiful? Do you have something to learn from this poem? Either style wise, or content wise?

Find the one that you like more, click the voting button, and you get two more poems.

Stop for a second…

There is little doubt in my mind that these pieces are beautiful, even poignant. I find myself whisked away by the artful language, and the beautiful imagery. In a way, they remind me of my writing, stark, and visceral. Few words, but each is so well chosen.

Are you ready? These poems weren’t written by a person at all… These poems were written by an evolutionary algorythm.

Their ancestors started as a collection of random words chosen from literary works, like Hamlet, and the Iliad. Literally, they were nonsense garbage all jumbled up together, and put into the world, forced to survive or die by their own merits.

That ‘vote’ you just made, where you picked your favorite poem? You just decided that it had better traits than the other one. By selecting it, you have contributed to its survival, and this is survival of the fittest.

Eventually, over time, votes just like yours will make the system decide that this poem is fit to procreate, and it will be ‘mated’ with another ‘fit’ poem, and they will create a litter of entirely brand new poems created of nothing but themselves to be submitted to voting.

These poems are competing for the resources they need to survive, your votes, to come of age and to breed; to continue their ‘bloodline’ into the next generation. Their words are their DNA, and it is passed on to their children.

What’s more is that this little website has fallen into disrepair. There are no more administrators. The main domain has expired, and there are no links to the voting applet, unless you really look hard for it. There is no one watching over the poems to ensure they are progressing. There is no intervention. The poems just are, and their world, in a computer system continues to plug along with or without any input.

The very instant that you recognize that there is no ‘author’ that there was no intention, or feeling of a single person selecting the words, it at once becomes something hideous, and terrible. It is a mockery of all our hard work, a travesty to the human language and poetry in general… but it’s beautiful, and it’s no less relevant, or evocative than if it had been penned by human hand. You realize that as a reader, the author and the act of writing is irrelevant, and entirely superfluous. You also realize that as an author, your work can mean many things to many people, but only one thing to you. Suddenly, you can accept it for what it is, and its beauty is startling.

I won’t detail the further implications of this, or stand on a soapbox and preach. Just stop, and take it all in. Really think about it. Then think about what poetry is, who is poetry for, who are you as a person, and where did we all come from as a species. Look at all the beauty around you, and liken it to the undeniable beauty of these, and your poems.