Poem Maker
Poem Maker
Starting from a randomly chosen seed, this Demonstration grows lines of text and formats them to resemble a poem. Successive letters are chosen from the specified text by matching in pairs, triplets, or more (controllable via the numbered buttons), and the resulting "poem" often contains an interesting blend of real words and made-up pseudo-words. When the text is in English (as in the default Alice in Wonderland), the "poem" is English-like. When the text is in French, the "poem" takes on a French character, and the available sources include texts from a variety of languages. The program is based on an idea by Claude Shannon (see the Details section) and provides an argument for the essential redundancies inherent in natural languages.