In light of the marvellous response to my programmatically generated Snowball poems, I have followed the suggestion of the esteemed Andy Baio and made this into a Twitter bot. Introducing @SnowballPoetry (bio: “i am the poet which robots created”). As of now, it spits out a new poem every few hours. It still needs to go through me to curate the output, so I’ve queued up enough for the next month. I’m working on making it fully automated, so that I won’t have to think about it. I would be very keen to hear anyone’s suggestions on how to do that.
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In light of the marvellous response to my programmatically generated Snowball poems, I have followed the suggestion of the esteemed Andy Baio and made this into a Twitter bot.

Introducing @SnowballPoetry (bio: “i am the poet which robots created”).

As of now, it spits out a new poem every few hours. It still needs to go through me to curate the output, so I’ve queued up enough for the next month. I’m working on making it fully automated, so that I won’t have to think about it. I would be very keen to hear anyone’s suggestions on how to do that.

There is also an Oulipo constraint called the Melting Snowball. This is pretty much what you’d expect it to be; it’s a poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one shorter. solitary brother always looks good but do i I figured it wouldn’t be too much trouble to change my original code so it can generate these as well. schooling business matters little think boys and so i I’ve found, though, that it tends to be much more difficult to find good ones. And, they pretty much all have to end in “I”. shadowy people would kill you as i Oulipo is a French movement; apparently this stuff is easier to do in French. Well, I suppose that’s why they call it a constraint. The C++ code is here.
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There is also an Oulipo constraint called the Melting Snowball. This is pretty much what you’d expect it to be; it’s a poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one shorter.

solitary
brother
always
looks
good
but
do
i

I figured it wouldn’t be too much trouble to change my original code so it can generate these as well.

schooling
business
matters
little
think
boys
and
so
i

I’ve found, though, that it tends to be much more difficult to find good ones. And, they pretty much all have to end in “I”.

shadowy
people
would
kill
you
as
i

Oulipo is a French movement; apparently this stuff is easier to do in French. Well, I suppose that’s why they call it a constraint.

The C++ code is here.

i am the path along unseen heather Snowball (also called a Chaterism): A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer. One of the constrained writing techniques utilised by the Oulipo (Workshop of Potential Literature). o we all have heard people believe anything Given the mathematical genesis of the Oulipo and the interest in the movement among other programmers, I thought that someone must have created a program to generate these, and I was surprised that I couldn’t find one even after some pretty thorough Googling. So I wrote one myself. The C++ code is here. It takes input from a text file which contains novels from Project Gutenberg, scans for word pairs where the second word is longer by one letter, and builds up a poem using Markov chains. i am the dawn light before anybody expected something disorderly The poems in this post were all created by the program. They have not been edited. i am the very great change
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i
am
the
path
along
unseen
heather

Snowball (also called a Chaterism): A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer. One of the constrained writing techniques utilised by the Oulipo (Workshop of Potential Literature).

o
we
all
have
heard
people
believe
anything

Given the mathematical genesis of the Oulipo and the interest in the movement among other programmers, I thought that someone must have created a program to generate these, and I was surprised that I couldn’t find one even after some pretty thorough Googling. So I wrote one myself. The C++ code is here.

It takes input from a text file which contains novels from Project Gutenberg, scans for word pairs where the second word is longer by one letter, and builds up a poem using Markov chains.

i
am
the
dawn
light
before
anybody
expected
something
disorderly

The poems in this post were all created by the program. They have not been edited.

i
am
the
very
great
change