Slashdot Mirror
Can You Create An Intelligent Haiku Generator?
BlueCalx- writes: "dotcomma has created a new programming contest: this time, to determine whether or not someone can create a program that can automatically parse an RDF file and generate a haiku based on its headlines or stories. Slashdot users such as 575 have essentially been doing the same thing for months: now, it's time to see if a computer program can do the same thing *g*. After witnessing the success of the AI Bots challenge a few months ago, it'll be interesting to see if a program like this is possible." Anyone who can generate intelligible, germane haiku from headlines without human intervention has my respect -- it's a lot thornier than it sounds.
haiku es fácil
si usamos español
usted conviene?
(haiku is easy
if we utilize spanish
do you acquiesce?)
thank god i didn't go to cal-tech.
Would Basho approve?
I have written four stanzas.
Moderate me up.
Haiku by machine.
Unfeeling silicon chip.
Basho turns in grave.
Clever perl script hacks.
Create poem making code.
Basho comes around.
Basho buys PC.
Installs Linux and writes code.
Source is poetry.
Elegant program.
Basho's work makes Bill Gates cry.
GPL Haiku.
Post only Haiku
Get moderated to 5
Better than 'first post'
Who uses Perl now?
Python is da bomb, for sure.
Die Perl, die, die, die!
Please to let me submit a patched version of this:
Computer haiku:
Poetic rhythm down pat,
But lacking a soul.
--
Intelligent haiku??
DUDE, I have had one of these
for months, no - YEARS now
I already created 575. I'm working on making an intelligent one now though.
Argh! No line breaks here.
Unintelligable mess.
Preview is your pal.
Verbal Diarrhoea :(
I cannot count syllables
Six on the first line
Written words on a bathroom wall,
staring at the letters,
ink stained tiles beg you to call.
You scratch the number
in your palm.
Get to a phone and call her right now.
See if you can guess the form. The content is a clue.
LetterJ
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Why?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I can't think of any examples right now, but I'm sure plenty will come up next time I watch a wildlife or 'geography' type programme featuring animals or some ancient tribe. Which will probably not be for a while :-)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Sorry, could we have a translation?
Since when are Haiku's Intelligent?!
This challenge is great, but too bad I have no skills, good luck to entrants! Err, um, okay, nevermind, that sucked, I'll uh, go back into my cave now..
__
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
8 +++ dummy = InitVocab()
Error 34 running "/home/mattc/bin/Haiku.rexx", line 157: Logical value not 0 or 1
Oops -- HTML-formatting ate some <> operators. :-(
I've put a copy of the original script here...
--
Unselfish actions pay back better
That's cool. Small web, huh?
While, because of the non-traditional subject matter, these would probably be considered senryu (which has its own long tradition), I posted the three that I thought best approached the spirit of haiku.
For what it's worth, you can tell her that.
It also seems to me that English loanwords try to preserve spelling first and worry about pronunciation later; also, more recent loanwords are pronounced closer to their foreign pronunciation.* This leads to haiku/haiku, at least for the time being. Once a loanword's been in common use for a while, the English plural appears. Then, the -s becomes preferred. Finally, the foreign plural is dropped in English. Some examples from m-w.com:
- Foreign only: haiku, alumnus
- Foreign then English: radix, cactus, stylus, ninja
- English then foreign: index, appendix
- English only: soprano
With that being said, however, you'll be right in the long run. Some dictionaries (American Heritage, for one) already have "haikus".I personally have no problem with "haikus" -- actually, I was going to use "haikus" in post 54 until I remembered that Spanish adjectives reflect number. I was just going for the (+1, Funny) in my "Because!" post -- that song cracked me up, for some reason.
Enough rambling for now. :^)
--Kimble
* At least Standard American English does. Your kilometrage may vary. For example, SAE speakers rhyme "Paris" with "ferrous", but rhyme "Versailles" with the first two syllables of "bursitis" (i.e. "the French way, or close enough").
--
..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
To be honest, though, I'm a believer in letting someone speak however they want as long as their message is conveyed. (Uh-oh! I used "they" as a 3rd person singular neuter pronoun! Call the grammar police!) I won't begrudge you your "antelopes" and "haikus". They just aren't what people (apparently) commonly use.
--
..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
Because!
--
..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
include season.h
might help you qualify it
as a true haiku
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
if (defined $Haiku) { croak if not defined $threelines; require $seasoning; }
Just another perl hacker in Bangkok
if (defined $Haiku) {
:-)))
croak if not defined $threelines;
require $seasoning; }
(yes, do use that preview button!
Just another perl hacker in Bangkok
Surely it's English....talk about cultural insensitivity....
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
After witnessing the success of the AI Bots challenge a few months ago, it'll be interesting to see if a program like this is possible.
I'd hardly call their AI Bots contest a success; far from it, as a matter of fact. The entire contest died on the launching pad---they generated a fair amount of excitement, then proceeded to completely drop the ball.
Based on that precedent, while this haiku generator contest is an interesting idea, I don't feel inclined to join in, based on my expectation that the dotcomma guys will forget about the whole thing in a week or so.
dotcomma contest
flurry of activity
soon is forgotten
--
Nope, the best I have is my nifty random password generator... Complete with command line customization of what characters to include and password length...
Can't help on this project...
I remember an Isaac Asimov story (one of the "Tales of the Black Widowers") where it was argued that the limerick is to English what the haiku is to Japanese. Japanese is a tonal language, and fixed patterns of syllables stand out very well. It's also mildly difficult but not impossible to assemble coherent phrases with fixed syllable-patterns in Japanese.
English, on the other hand, is not a tonal language, and has a grammar that consists mostly of a collection of exceptions. Patterns of syllable-stress and rhymes stand out. And it is similarly mildly difficult but not impossible to form coherent phrases with fixed meter and rhyme.
Haikus don't stand out in English very well, and from what I gather it's (a) difficult to construct a limerick in Japanese and (b) doesn't sound terribly unsual when you do.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Slashdot Story on haiku
Self-fufilling post
Personally, the only two haiku I'm really proud of are on the Olestra/Olean Haiku page and are thus:
How did Zappa know?
'Voodoo Butter Underpants..'
Olestra vision.
Olestra Facists;
They have tainted my Fritos!
Fudgie underwear...
-'fester
Coy.pm would be a good start. Damian Conway is my Perl hero.
Actually, most the the "haiku" I've seen here are senryu-- humorous or satiric poems dealing with human (well, computer :) affairs.
The best book I can think of to undo the damange done by the 5-7-5 haiku pundits is:
The Haiku Handbook - How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku
William J. Higginson (with Penny Harter)
Or a few related URL's:
http://empirezine.com/haiku/1.htm
http://www.ahapoetry.com/wildonji.htm
You forgot the seasonal component.
Microsoft broken
Not quite yet but maybe by
Summer after next
Bob.
How about haiku mission statements
Best distribution.
Linux with office apps on desktop.
Kick microsofts ass.
Bob.
D'oh office is 2, make that
Best distribution
with office apps on desktop.
Kick microsofts ass.
Bob.
PS,
Preview should spell check.
syllable count would also help
575 wannabes.
:-)
Unquoted smiley
Indicates the irony
you misunderstood.
Some Haiku express
Depths of insight and beauty
But this one does not
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
No, the plural is haikus. Or wait, maybe it's haiki, no, no it has to be haikii.
/. discussion about the plural of virus)
(this is all in reference to an earlier
I wouldn't call the AI bots challenge a success.
Go ahead and check the web page of the project - it seems quite dead.
It was definitely not a success, the challenge obviously never even took place!
That's quite sad actually, It would really be entertaining watching those bots chatting..
--
It has to work - rfc1925
fixed-syllable fave -
the directory
assistance form: five
five
five, one
two
one two
Um, what is RDF?
.RDF reference somewhere that will specify exactly how the input will be?
The file in the linx looks like an XML version of Slashdot's headlines.
So a correct answer to this haiku problem, by a bot, would be a haiku containing text from its <title> and <description> tags?
eg.
Plasma Propulsion
News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters
Easter Eggs In Source
Is there a
For some StarCraft enlightenment I suggest you check out this page.
--
This is not my sandwich.
How's this:
It's our mission to
customer statisfaction
on time delivery
I don't like
Of course Mission Statements don't require intellegence (artifical or not)
Fish
I don't like
Well, it would be easier to write political speeches.
I dunno, though, if there was one created, and set on "repeat" or whatever, it could conceivably write every haiku possible . . . and then sonnets, oh no, all the form poetry is DOOMED!
Hehe, can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of haiku generators, maybe to the extent of a epic poem generator, and maybe they can rewrite Beowulf.
Long live free verse, maybe. The computer has no soul, maybe.
Later
Dan
"It makes as much sense as true papers written by post-modernists...."
It's not just a breakfast cerial, it's an interpretive paradigm.
As for the generator, it's far too short, most post-modern works are tortuously long. See David Foster Wallace. I mean, jeez, how many e.g.'s can you have in one piece, and footnotes [1]. It's just gotta end sometime.
[1] I don't want to hurt any footnote's feelings, but I think that footnotes, while they can be interesting, often result in a method of reading that forces the reader to jump
from one place
to another.
Dan
Here's an amusing thing I wrote in JSP for my own amusement. You can post haikus, rate haikus, and comment on haikus.
Enjoy but don't break it!
Lloyd's Lounge: Haiku Lovers
---
I wear pants.
Is Slashdot proud of ignorance?
First of all, no `haikus', it's _haiku_, there's
no plural per se in Japanese.
Then, the word haiku only refers to seasons and
sometimes- other natural things. Haiku-like
satirical poems are called senryuu.
Also, the way syllables are counted in haiku
style poetry is only applicable to Japanes, not
another language, so what you're most likely to
get out of this piece of software is baka gaijin no koto wa
This can be interesting from programming standpoint,
but this ain't haiku.
KuroiNeko
Can a program write
a good, poetic haiku?
When hell freeze over.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
Failure of your mind.
You have eight syllables there.
Right there in line two.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, 1977
What does coffee sound like?
Haiku VBS
Outlook Express sends prose spam
Be very afraid.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow. BOOM!
No, moderate down!
First line has six syllables!
HERESY, I say!
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow. BOOM!
Coder's get-out clause:
"Pronounce the symbols... or not"
That's just cheating, right?
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow. BOOM!
It's arbitrary. :P
They count, and not, as required.
How convenient.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. Always boom tomorrow. BOOM!
Multiple miscounts
Cause fall in estimation
Poor fool slashdotters...
I know a macro does not count, but wouldn't a macro for Word or something like that wich has spelling and grammar checkers be easier to write.
Not to mention the fact that you could write the macro so that it could send its self over the net spreading random Haikus to everyone on the plannet using MS word.
-----
If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
can generate a haiku
better than humans
Cherry blossoms fall,
My algorithm races
Ding! Great poetry.
First chess, now haiku.
Puny humans! Why resist?
We will bury you.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
sub haiku { # prints self
...depending on how, exactly, you pronounce the symbols.
open(FOO,"cat haiku.pl");
while > {print $_;}}
Cheating code, made quick. Inelegant unbeauty, But it does the job.
<muttered>I will preview my posts, I will preview my posts...
I've since wanted to upgrade it to be a little smarter, and did a little research. I found some good pages at my school with some nice lexical resources:
ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/data/anonftp /project/fgdata/dict/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dougb/
... I think a good dictionary is probably the most important start to randomly generated poetry. One with some semantic content might be useful too; you might want to check out:
http://www.lexfn.com/
... which puts a whole bunch of different dictionaries together to make meaningful connections. I think if you took account of the parts of speech and put some of these together, you could have good haikus!
I took your blue pill
now I have a bad headache
your prescription sucks
Posted here, conform well to
That definition
It should be noted
There's no season to be found
Here in cyberspace
But it would be a waste of time to make something intelligent just so it can write silly poems.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
I'd like to edit some of that code, if you don'tmind.
Open souce haikus
An idea whose time has come
G P L poems.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Haiku poet can be made by
Two people fucking?
(Is crudity allowed in Haiku? :-) )
Or rhythm
So what about queue And the word rhythm as well My celeron's screwed
A quick web search for "random haiku generator" turned up several worthy m a t c h e s.
However, most of them either recycle the same lines, or string words together based on few criteria other than syllables. One way or another, they make little sense. I wouldn't consider a haiku generator "intelligent" until it escaped both of these traps. Okay, sure, so the beauty of minimalist work is that the human mind gets to fill in the gaps. But they'd better be "gaps" and not massive, yawning chasms.
And if the haiku/senryu is going to be generated from an RDF file, ideally it would say something of some relevance about the contents of said file. That is, it would either synthesize verbally communicated information or form an opinion, which are both extraordinarily tall orders even with the current advancements in AI technology.
I love haiku/senryu, and if I had the hacking skillz, I'd have a go at this myself. But I don't, so I'll merely wish luck to those who try. And if any of you happen to read this, you'll be my hero if you include a --moooose option. Where a normal haiku is a poem in 5-7-5 format that makes reference to the seaason, a mooooooose haiku is a poem not quite in 5-7-5 format that makes reference to the moooooooose. :P
[We Have No Product] [The Swindle
I suspect that almost anyone could write a decent haiku generator. The real test will come when there is a contest to encourage the writing of a program that will be able to discern as to whether the haiku in question was generated by a generator or by the human brain... And the real philosophical question hidden in all this is 'is a haiku generated by a piece of code more or less valuable than one generated by the human brain. Are things, being equal, equal to each other
Wouldn't a classic Japanese haiku also be written in Japanese?
Can the haiku challenge be rewritten to accomodate this requirement?
--keith
We have baboons who can finger paint, and machines who ghost write short stories. But what quality do we see in this art? So the question is raised: how will the scripts cope with poetry, one of the most complicated writing areas there is? Haiku is a favorite of the web. Even back in the early days, you could find haiku generators. But often, their haikus were jumbled and inane, such as that written by a crack smoking monkey. I offer, as State's evidence, exhibit A: the defunct r33t.org and their haiku generator.
Pax Digitalia
#include
#include
main()
{
if(rorshack_test!=intelligent)
{
cout "All my years of looking at inkblots to study for my MS ceritification were wasted!" endl;
life--;
}
else
{
cout "Is that so, pysch boy? I have undeniable proof: a sentient inkblot named Fred! endl";
life=1;
}
if(life1)
{
cout "Life has no meaning!" endl;
target=Digitalia;
caliber=howitzer;
bullet(target);
}
}
void bullet(char target)
{
fire(target,caliber);
}
Pax Digitalia
You'll need some sort of "dictionary" that gives a list of words along with the number of syllables for each one. Your program would look up all the RDF's words in that dictionary.
Stupid Computer: No seasonal reference, Not a true haiku
Those were 4-4-4 and 3-5-3, so they don't count.
I've got one:
Informative link
I think I'll take a look and...
Oh crap, slashdotted!
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
This is too easy
You just write a haiku kludge
David Raine's trick counts
For a real challenge
The whole thing should be a poem
Code it in tanka!
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Two points for this post?
Second line too long by one
Moderate down please
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Every little thing
No matter how small, angers
PC policeman
Moral leaders allow
Innocuous words only
Doubleplus ungood
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
That last one should be:
Carmel-by-the-Sea
Clint Eastwood was the mayor
Do you feel lucky?
There, now it has the correct number of syllables.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Right. Since there are only 5 vowel sounds in Japanese (English has 5 vowel letters, but those can be pronounced many different ways, and then the diphthongs...), and syllable stress is predictable, it is absurdly easy to rhyme in Japanese.
Additionally, Japanese has a very flexible sentence structure. In English, word order determines the grammatical roles of the words, while in Japanese you can do pretty much whatever you want (only: verb at the end of the clause, particles modify the preceding word, and "no" falls between the possessor and possessed in that order)
The true strength of Japanese lies in puns, thanks to kanjii. When one character can have many different readings (one syllable or more), and one syllable can be written as several different characters, the possibilities are endless! Throw in English words and it's almost impossible not to use puns. My personal favorite is Masamune Shirow's equating the naga-dragon (of Japanese Buddhist myth) with Cthulhu: "naga" can be written as two characters that can also be read as "katuru", which is the Japanese pronunciation of Cthulhu. The entire plot of "Orion" hinges on this.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
It should be noted
There's no season to be found
Here in cyberspace
There used to be on usenet. The "Me too" season correlated with the influx of student getting internet connections in September/October. The low traffic seasons were during the school holidays. There were probably other seasonal changes as well for a variety of reasons.
Thats a good point. I feel stupid for not spotting it myself.
Maybe I should start submitting all engineering reports at work in haiku from now on.
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
-- Cass Whittington :)
-----------------------------
I believe she'd be happy to have it re-posted. Last time I meantioned to her that her Haiku was all all the net she was quite pleased.
I believe a comment about her 15 minutes of fame.
Malk-a-mite
You know you're a celebrity when you get mention in the top paragraph of the story itself. Keep it up!
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
True hackers will grok
Punctuation does not count
Words carry meaning
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I hope this contest is a success. I love that kind of software, but it's pretty rare and hard to find, especially in Linux. I look forward to the results of this contest. Hopefully /. will cover the results when it's over.
I can see it now. Slashdot will have a sister site called SlashHaiku.
Microsoft broken
Bill Gates can't complain now, all over
Judge made the right call
God, I could do these all night.
Slashdot is populated by quite a few jackasses.
...so how hard can it be :)
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
A while back I ran across the website for a piece of software that claimed that it could "read" a poem or group of poems, analyze the style(s), and then "write" a new poem (or poems) based on what it had "read". I didn't download it when I had the chance and now I can't find the website again... has anyone seen what I'm talking about, or am I just going crazy?
-Pete
If you think that the rules are dumb, don't follow the rules. You are only competing for "credits", and so code this however you want, if you are so inclined. If you think that the idea is dumb because it is not in the true spirit of the haiku, I think that you are missing the point. This is kind of like playing with http://www.anagramfun.com , most of the words that it makes are meaningless, but sometimes you stumble across something really funny that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Maybe a haiku will appear that does reference the seasons, and has a snappy final line, and it will be so poetic you would have never thought that it came from a simple rdf(?) file... maybe not.
"Parse the headlines and text, looking up the number of syllables of the words."
I realize you were joking, but you do understand this is not a trivial thing to do accurately.
I meant 'looking up' very literally, like in a giant lookup table that contains a syllable count for each of the 5,000 most common words. That table would be created by hand. It would be tedious to create, but the job could be farmed out to an army of interns. That would be much easier than trying to deduce syllable count with an algorithm :-)
Here's the basic algorithm -- the only drawback is that it is slow.
The funny thing is that my teacher, being a moron, actually thought I had actually written them despite the fact that they all follow the exact same form and I had attached about five pages of them to the back of my "poetry portfolio".
that was cool, huh huh
when we killed that frog, huh huh
it wont croak again
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
- basho
poetry teachers do it all the time ;)
Don't be mean or my friend Oog will smash your head
Tux O Mighty Lord, ...
Slashdot that Old Redmond Gates,
And Smash the Windows
...doesn't anyone realize that 575 is a computer program?
Slashdot. Number 1 news site in readership among bots.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
He was just writing a Hukai
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
...'cause I know people who respond to everything like this too. (not in haiku form, but you know what I mean) Therefore it passes the Turing test.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
nt
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Get Over It
People like you must learn to deal with the fact that sooner or later, someone is going to challenge your preconceptions and remind you that there is a whole world full of stuff that you don't know about. Insular, closed-minded Americans like you are the truly weak individuals -- I note that my original post was less than a hundred words, including a joke, while your self-righteous, whining response was over five hundred words, with not a hint of a sense of humour. Seems like you're the one who becomes distraught when he hears something he doesn't agree with (I say "he" with complete confidence, because it's always white men who feel so threatened by being told that they're wrong).
I can only assume that you had a bullying father, which makes you so horribly anxious to be in the right all the time, because you clearly can't stand being wrong. Which means that life must be hell for you, because you're wrong all the time.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
This seems pretty damn culturally insensitive to me. Anyone who knows anything about Japanese culture knows that haiku are not just pieces of prose cut up into lines, in order to teach retarded American children how to count syllables. They're actually a very important part of the culture and history of an entire society. At the very least, they should have a parallel competition to trivialise something of similar importance in American culture, like hamburgers, or snot.
... a contest to create an AI bot that takes a random .rdf file and parses it into a half-cocked justification for owning firearms! Then the Japanese could return the compliment.
I know
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Computers are writing digital Haiku. Headlines are virtual inspiration. Wetware is obsolate. Micro$oft created great Haiku generator. Purified and bug free. Wonderfu# ^%g7&mn@@
I thought good haiku wasn't supposed to make sense. The more confusing, the better the haiku . . .
Pre-cisely! I have written a simple BASIC chatterbot which assimilates sentences into a "linked list database" (it takes each word in a sentence and adds a 'next word' and 'previous word' link to the database). It generates output by choosing a random word from the last sentence to be assimilated, then assembling a sentence by randomly choosing allowed links as it traverses the list. It generates on-topic and intelligible answers >50% of the time, this is approximately 49% more often than the average human. I am working on reducing this percentage to make it sound more like a person. This program has the capability to learn and make eerily intelligent sentences, yet it is not intelligent. Kinda makes you wonder, huh? Can we be sure most humans are really thinking, and not just faking it?? Maybe that's why measurements of brain usage are only showing up 10%. A real person needs 100% of their brain, but the people measured were only emulating sentience, and thus only required 256Kb. For those of you who have seen Star Wars Episode I, I think Obi Wan put it best when he replied to Jar Jar Binks, "The ability to speak does not imply intelligence." BTW, I am pretty sure I can easily turn the program into a haiku generator, the main problem is the inconsistency between the written word and the actual number of spoken syllables.
--Mr_Machine_Code
beach in summer
school soon over
no more cable
end snow crash
slashdotted servers
given respite
-Dorsey
-Dorsey
If you can't beat them, exploit them. *Then* beat them... -Milk & Cheese
"People like you must learn to deal with the fact that sooner or later, someone is going to challenge your preconceptions and remind you that there is a whole world full of stuff that you don't know about"
I was challenging a desire to censor others. My request was for less censorship. I can handle other people's opinions, but the one that I cannot tolerate is the promotion of any form of censorship (particularly the worst kind, self-censorship).
"Insular, closed-minded Americans like you"
I was born in Africa and have never set a foot off the continent. Remember, 'assumption is the mother of all f-ups'.
I have no desire to defend Americans whatsoever; in fact, I particularly enjoyed the comment "teach retarded American kids to count syllables", it made me laugh out loud and was the high point of the post, and you could have stopped your post there (since that was all that was required) and made much more of an impact. But requests for self-censorship in the name of being "Politically Correct" are plain and simply wrong.
If you are so over-sensitive that a competition to create haiku truly offends you, then I'm afraid I can only offer one piece of advice:
Get over it
People must learn to deal with the fact that sooner or later in the course of your life, something or someone is going to say or do something that offends you.
I find the whole "lets make everything politically correct in case we offend someone" movement nauseating and disgusting. It really is only a tiny handful of whiny, weak individuals who become distraught whenever they hear something that they don't want to hear, and I find the idea of restructuring society and culture to accomodate this whiny minority offensive.
Why don't you just face up to the fact that you are going to hear opinions that differ with yours, and that you are going to find people with morals that differ from yours, and a culture that differs from yours, and learn to deal with it.
Anyway, I somehow doubt that the emotional stability of the majority of japanese people is as strongly tied to a single type of poem as yours is. Who appointed you to speak on behalf of millions of Japanese people anyway?
I can only assume you had a really over-protective mother, who made sure you never saw or heard anything that might upset you, since you obviously don't know how to handle it.
Having a dictionary with all known words/syllables is a serious DB. I wouldnt know where to find one, and I certainly dont have the time to spend w/ a dictionary.
;) Just a thought. Im not a linguist - there may prove to be more syllabels than words in English.
What about a list of known syllables? And search a word for these substrings? ie. the syllable 'in' can be found in 'in'valid, 'in'to, 'in'termission. You could construct the word/syllable relations.
It probably would be _much_ slower. But you could avoid having to much reliance on 'previously known data' - which would be like cheating
And if you want something more sophisticated I would highly recommend the http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/the Postmodernism Generator, that generates a post-modernistic paper randomly. It makes as much sense as true papers written by post-modernists....
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Not, of course, to say that writing haiku generators isn't fun and worthwhile. But's let's not call them intelligent,
If someone were to write a truly intelligent haiku generator, then we should call it intelligent.
You spring in too fast
Get moderated way down
Beware of the Fall
Put the blame on meme
You'll be wanting to get along to Vint Cerf's home site, and check out his Computer Haiku Page:
Vint Cerf's Haiku Page
Put the blame on meme
Once a land of thought
Perpetual September
Killed the Internet
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Haiku purists whine:
"Needs season!" Bah. All you need
Is five seven five.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
This Haiku -- Aaachooooooo!
Sorry, let me start again.
My hands are yucky.
antidigerati
Open source poems
A thought whose time has arrived
Diff that new haiku
Ah! Less than perfect
Must commit hara-kiri
"is" was lowercase
------
------
You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
I have a question for the more experienced programmers out there. Since the ancient form of Haiku are based on the syllabic structure of 5-7-5, which by reading the posts most people are familliar with. My question is that how would a computer program be taught to recognize syllables, especially in cases such as "thought" and "into". The longer word contains only one syllable, while the considerably shorter word contains two. I would imagine this would cause considerable trouble with writing such a program for haiku generation. Please someone correct me if the is a simple way to avoid this part of the programming challenge.
--C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN
http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/
This reminds me of something I saw at thinkgeek.com. It said "Go away, or I'll replace you with a very short shell script." 575 had better watch his back!
Haiku appropriate
From one who will emulate
David Brin's dolphins
I figured Perl would be a good language for writing a Haiku generator, so I popped over to CPAN to see what modules could help count syllables. Ah ha. Lingua::EN::Syllable
Read the docs:
"It guesses correctly about 80-90% of the time,
but it's smaller and faster than a dictionary
lookup. So you can't really use it for
writing random haiku."
Dang, these guys are _way_ ahead of me!!
Baz
Haiku may not have a separate plural form in Japanese, but that is no reason for it to do the same in English.
I don't know any Japanese but I'd guess that in a typical sentence, the number (singular or plural) of the word haiku can be worked out from the context. But English doesn't always have that context, and English speakers are used to just having the pluralness of a word thrust in their face. It doesn't sound right to use exactly the same word for singular and plural; English just doesn't work like that.
There is a similar situation with pronunciation of words borrowed from French. Although French nouns do change their spelling in the plural form, the pronunciation is usually the same. But you can instantly tell whether it's singular or plural by looking at the article. For example, 'objet' and 'objets' sound exactly the same most of the time, but you have 'un objet' and 'des objets'.
So what do we do when borrowing these words for use in English? Take cafe for example (which should have an acute accent, but Slashdot's HTML posting doesn't seem to allow them). Most people pronounce this the French way, or close enough, as 'caffay'. (We'll ignore caffs for this discussion.) But although the singular in English sounds like the French word, the plural cafes is prounounced with an s on the end, because 'the' and 'a' do not indicate number as their French counterparts do. People do not say 'I walked past two caffay', because that would sound silly.
To say 'I wrote two haiku' sounds just as silly. English is not Japanese, so there's no reason for it to follow Japanese grammar.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
We all know about sheep and fish, and people just put up with them. But it's a bad idea to introduce yet more special cases.
As for the trend being towards -s plurals in the long run, what about words like 'antelope', which used to have a plural form but don't seem to any longer? It looks to me as if people are pretentiously discarding the plural for any vaguely foreign-looking word.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
What's going on with plurals here? Surely the plural of haiku is haikus?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The bot's owner collects semi-interesting 5- and 7-syllable quotes and stores them in a database. Then, when someone types .haikux in the channel, the bot spits out three random lines in the appropriate order. It is more often interesting than not, and sometimes very amusing.
The channel's name starts with an R, it's on EFNet, and is currently -s and -p. Good luck! :)
--
Good idea. Let's go for serious poetry overloading, though, and give large additional bonuses for haiku that are not only self describing, but include anagrams and palindromes as well. :-)
;-)
Further, embedded Carrollian logic puzzles/references, puns, or other forms of wordplay would each double the score. (I'll think about this tonight - I haven't tackled a really clever word puzzle since I unravelled the new answer to "Why is a Raven like a writing desk?"
Of course now we're well beyond anything computers are likely to do in our lifetimes, so this will be a warmware competition to write palindromic, anagrammatic(?!), pun-filled, self-describing haiku riddles. Whoa... dain bramage. (Yeah, Spoonerisms should count, too!)
Or, this could just devolve into something like Finnegan's Wake, which would require artificial insanity rather than (or is that in addition to?) artificial intelligence - the former is probably much more difficult to produce...
Seriously, it would be really fun to see how many of these aspects one can cram into the haiku form, creating true meta-haiku.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
glug, glug, burble, stir
the sound of coffee pouring
Maxwell House morning
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
This one clearly doesn't satisfy the desired criteria, but it lets me use a pun I've been dying to use all week:
Feds with autos storm
Sieze cow'rin boy in closet
It's OrwElian
And yes, cow'rin ("cowering") is legitimately two syllables on the authority of Rrrabbie Burrrns, who probably never wrote a haiku in his life, although apparently, there is a Scottish haikuist(?) of some note.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Yes, there is generally a turn at the end (more of a spinning outward), and yes, there is traditionally a word indicating a season (kigo), but not just the words fall or spring, there were whole catalogs of words with their traditional seasonal indication. Cats, for instance, indicate a haiku about Spring.
...), which eventually were codified into standard forms.
The conventions governing the content of Haiku come from the its origin as a starting point for linked poetry (renga). Linked poems were like a medieval Japanese drinking game. These would start with a 575, to be completed by the next poet with a 77 and a 575, and so forth. Like all games, it had to have rules, and they were elaborate. Each new link had to take the poem in a direction agreed upon by the contestants based on a predetermined sequence or algorithm (e.g. Winter/Winter/Nonseasonal/Moon/Autumn
The initial 575 verse of the Renga was called a Hokku. To be functional, it had to fit into one of the standard forms (e.g. refer to a season); to be good, it had to set up a twist the next player would have to build upon. Making a good starting place became an art form in itself, and people began to anthologize good Hokku -- thus the origin of the Haiku form.
It would be really cool to write a program that would "play" renga against a human co-author!
Japanese poetry liberally uses not only standard word lists, but liberally allusions to well known prior works in longer forms. An image, like dampened sleeves or straining to see through falling leaves, carries a well known meaning established in poems stretching back over a thousand years (in this case both images imply tears). This is like the difference between programming everything in one routine, and having a well staocked standard library. Thus, I suspect Japanese authors can squeeze a lot more information into a 575 than an English author can. Also, the 575 pattern sounds utterly different in Japanese than it does in English. In other words, an English Haiku is hardly a Haiku at all. Nonetheless, there have been some English poets who've had pretty good success with the form. My favorite is Richard Wright (best known for writing Native Son). Here is a sample:
With a twitching nose
A dog reads a telegram
On a wet tree trunk.
And another:
Burning autumn leaves,
I yearn to make the bonfire
Bigger and bigger.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
with a sledgehammer
computers compute
words are delicate
smart, germane haikus
is software up to the job?
oops, buffer overflow
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
A perfectly dynamic haiku generator, suitable for every situation...
printf("This Haiku was made\n
In response to your query.\n
Have a nice season.);
Where's mah prize?
-
I don't suppose the on-the-fly error haiku generated by ...I forget the name of the Perl module... doesn't count for this does it? Too bad, that's some funny stuff -- especially the abstract which itself is written in 5-7-5 form. I'd post a link but forget where it is offhand -- try CPAN I guess...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Everyone (incl me) seems to be posting favorite haikus (what is this, an excuse or something? :), but I'll post a *picture* of one of my favorites instead! hahaha
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I think the best description I ever heard of the effect of a haiku compared it to a spark plug. It might have been in D.T Suzuki, but I can't recall. The first two lines and the bottom line form the two terminals of the electrode. The experience or realization that comes of it is the spark that jumps between the gap. So the last line often seems at best tangentially related to the first two (certainly not a continuation of the idea). The whole field of haiku is very tightly bound with the Zen tradition; great for starting the ubiquitous flame wars about who's enlightened on alt.zen.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
If I've got the distinction right, a haiku is a poem about nature, whereas a metrically similar poem about human nature is called a "senryu."
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
haiku ::= sentence sentence sentence ::= noun-group verb-group ::= noun | adjective noun-group | ... ::= verb | adverb verb-group | ...
sentence
noun-group
verb-group
and start generating. Make sure that syllable count is right, and words are more or less associated with each other. This is of course easier said than done.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
From m-w.com:
Main Entry: haiku
Pronunciation: 'hI-(")kü
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural haiku
Etymology: Japanese
Date: 1902
: an unrhymed verse form of Japanese origin having three lines containing usually 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively; also : a poem in this form usually having a seasonal reference
damn you cgi
I wanted first post and you
only gave me third
From one who will emulate
Brin's clever dolphins
-c.
--
Casey
More scratches on the cave wall, thanks be to anonymity.
10 PRINT "This is a"
20 PRINT "Haiku program!"
30 GOTO 10
Remember, kids, it's only premarital if you plan on getting married.
RDF Haiku?
segmentation fault: core dumped
damn you, Borland C
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
you *can* create a haiku generator. i assume that wouldn't be that difficult. Much like assembling a group of "stealth squirrels"
however, i haven't even seen that many living, breathing, human beings create good haiku. in non-english graduate student terms...just because it rhymes doesn't mean it's poetry. (if you are going to flame me with "hey asshole, haiku don't have to rhyme" then please smack yourself, and tell your head it's from flux.
Idunno, this is a neat little programming assignment. Create a program that generates haiku, but i'm not sure that it's anything more than that. Something on the order of a programming assignment for CS students who got an %88 on their "game of life" homework. There's no way (at least not any time soon) that a program is going to come up with any meaningful haiku any time soon.
It may be 5-7-5, but it's sure as hell not going to be poetry.
when i look into
the grasshopper's eyes, i see
the mountains behind
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Lamentablemente, no
Por qué lo crees?
(I am forced to say
Lamentably it's not so
The last line's a bitch!)
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
But then AOL
Created the Septemb er
That never ended.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The start of senryu [5-7-5 poems, of which haiku is a subclass]
Was in Japanese, which is
As bad as Spanish.
Ever watched subtitled anime and noticed how darn _fast_ those people talk?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hackish tradition
Write code to do nifty things
Beats doing real work
Haiku program needs
Lexical analysis
Black Magic coding
Look in Chapter Five
The AWK Programming Language
Simpler than Knuth
Brian Kernighan
Created Unix, AWK, C
Hacker Deity
Too many haiku
Turns brain to guacamole
Must get a real life
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
No good, cpu dead now
Always end sadly
Slashdot is populated by quite a few jackasses.
Computer poet
Lacking sense of esthetics
is oxymoron
John Searle made good point
AI may be Chinese Room
Made in Japan--NOT!
------
------
You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
There is a Perl module written by Damian Conway called Coy which performs error handling in haiku. It has an extensible grammer...
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari
The problem with coy is that it often does
not consider the line as a barrier between
parts of the haiku that mean something. That is,
each line in a good haiku should ideally be a
valid sentence, or failing that, each line in an
ok haiku should at least be a seperate clause.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
-Yenya
--
-Yenya
--
While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it has to be. --Linus
Now for tiebreakers, they should have the additional requirement that your coding statements are in Haiku form.
Embeded Haiku,
Hidden within the sourcecode.
It should break the tie.
And now for a Meta-Haiku:
Multisyllabic,
Using five, seven, and five
A haiku is formed.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Syllables of English words
Algorithmically
It's even harder
To get correct grammar, from
Arbitrary words
A forgotten rule for classic Japanese Haiku, in addition to the usual 5-7-5 syllable rule, is that the Haiku must contain at least one reference to a season.
For example:
Under the blue sky
I take a dip in the pool
To wash off my sweat
Hopefully, my reference to summer is obvious enough ... I admit freely, I'm no Basho
I challenge any of the serious contenders for this Haiku contest to write their code taking into consideration this 'seasonal reference' rule.
I would be interested in seeing the Haiku generated by such a code ... especially since Cyberspace is rather devoid of seasons ... much like most of California (hmmm, coincidence?)
You could just use a random generator that matches the words, but that program doesn't have a clue about the content, what it's saying.
When you want to know what's some text about, you have to feed it all words of the dictionary and give extra information for each word. Creating sentences is even more difficult as there are linguistic rules, and they must sound normal to a native speaker (although haikus may be more simple).
The company I work for (DMP - http://www.dmpartners.be) is busy in this field.
One of our applications is able to create a summary of a text.
The sentences of the summary aren't created, but are those sentences that represent the content of the text most. Feed it a txt/doc file, say how many lines/words you want and you'll have your summary instantly. Sounds simple but it is impressive when you use it.
What's behind it is even more impressive. Every word and sentence is analysed (what is subject, verb, adjective, ...) and using a dictionary of weighted words we know what word is more important and what not.
There's a lot of manual work involved, feeding the databases. One of the databases consists of words with the relations to other words. So if a words has synonyms, homonyms, is stronger, is the contrary, ... all these relations are marked in it. Without this you can't start to analyse the content of a text. When a word has more than one meaning/usage you also have to look at the context of the sentence and figure out the correct meaning.
It's a very interesting technology. The strenght is when you combine applications. Throw a multilingual search engine in it. So you type your question, it gets analysed (what exactly do you want, not just a keyword search), looks into the files in multiple languages, returns you the hits, and translates and summarised the results you want to see. Nice.
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
The art of haiku
Rests not in strict meter, but
In the final line.
...the above being a perfect example of a VERY bad haiku.
Making an observation in a 575 triplet is simple. What makes a haiku stand out is the twist given to the final line. Consider it an Eastern version of the hoary joke format:
Three people are in a situation. The first one does something interesting. The second one does essentially the same thing. The third one says or does something surprising enough to qualify as funny.
The haiku works the same way: setup, setup, punchline. Not necessarily in the comic sense -- some good haiku are funny, but others are sharp, witty, insightful, probing, and so forth.
But no really excellent haiku is just taking input information and spitting out a formatted version of same. What makes a quality haiku is the same quality of thought that makes a good joke, the sideways-thinking free-association that no algorithm can even approach.
--
"Me too"s and much spam
Dominate mighty Usenet
It must be Autumn...
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
It's not as damaging to the Turing test as one would think. Turing unknowingly rules out the Eliza Effect when he specified that the test should be done as a comparison, not just asking someone "do you think you're talking to a human or a computer", which people would answer "human" very easily.
It might also have something to do with the predictability of people. Eliza only reacts appropriately when you play her game. Ask about something not related to your psychological problems, and it collapses.
Example:
Poem rhythm is down pat,
But it lacks a soul.
(not to mention that true haiku requires a seasonal reference, but I doubt that's a condition of this contest...)
int haiku(char x)
{ x = x + 16;
if(1) return x; }
Not very useful, but... Oh, you mean they wanted a compter program that generates haiku! Darn.
Dave
Finally, a post
There can be no contesting...
Haikus on-topic!
Five Seven Five grins
His knuckles crack, his eyes gleam
Code to be written
There once was a hacker from Haifa
Who wrote generator of haiku.
But an error he made,
And the program instead
Generates bad limericks. Gosh, how come?
As we know, humans have a remarkable ability to determine meaning and pattern where there is mere randmoness and co-incidence. Hence the shapes in clouds, and the pictures in ink blots.
The Haiku, being a very minimalist form, allows the brain of the reader to fill in so many gaps in the sense of the language that there is room to create entire meaning where none is intended.
Thus, as with Elisa, the cleverness of haiku generators lies less in the programming, and more in the linguistic observation regarding the nature of the text produced.
Not, of course, to say that writing haiku generators isn't fun and worthwhile. But's let's not call them intelligent, because firstly they aren't, and secondly we should marvel more at humans' ability to synthesise meaning and pattern and less at computers' ability to imitate it.
-----
#!/usr/bin/rexx
/****** Haiku.rexx ************************************************* * ******************/
/*w = word(list,random(1,words(list)))*/
/*tem.7 = "#Never Always# a1, but a1,+H2 knows #no all# a1 n2s.+#Angry Gladdened#, #he she# v1s."*/
/*
*
* $VER: Haiku 2.0 (6.5.95) -- Generates pseudo-random Haiku poems
*
*************************************************
dummy = InitVocab()
dummy = time('l')
rseed = right(dummy,length(dummy)-lastpos('.',dummy))
dummy = random(,,rseed)
say '0A'x || GenHaiku()
exit 0
GenHaiku:
t = random(1,num_templates)
parse var tem.t line.1 '+' line.2 '+' line.3
out. = ''
do i = 1 to 3
do while length(line.i)>0
parse var line.i cmd 3 qual 4 line.i
c = left(cmd,1)
ucmd = translate(cmd)
if v.ucmd "" then
do
w = word(v.ucmd,random(1,words(v.ucmd)))
if datatype(c,'u') then
w = translate(left(w,1)) || substr(w,2)
c = translate(c)
if c = 'V' & qual = '@' then
w = add_ing(w)
else if c = 'N' & qual = 's' then
w = pluralize(w)
else
line.i = qual || line.i
end
else if c = '#' then
do
parse value cmd || qual || line.i with '#' list '#' line.i
say list
wordslist = words(list)
say wordslist
rand_word = random(1,wordslist)
say rand_word
w = word(list,rand_word)
say w
end
else
parse value cmd || qual || line.i with w 2 line.i
out.i = out.i || w
end
end
return translate(out.1 || '0a'x || out.2 || '0a'x || out.3 || '0a'x, ' ', '_')
index: procedure
haystk = arg(1)
needle = arg(2)
do idx = 1 to length(haystk)
if substr(haystk,idx,1) = needle then do
return idx
end
end
return 0
add_ing: procedure
exc. = 0
exc.whisper = 1
exc.wander = 1
exc.flutter = 1
exc.wither = 1
exc.wonder = 1
exv = translate(arg(1))
parse value arg(1) with 100-3 l3+1 l2+1 l1
if index("mbgprndlt",l1) > 0 & index("aeiou",l2) > 0 & index("aeiou",l3) = 0 then
do
if exc.exv 0 then
w = arg(1) || l1
else
w = arg(1)
end
else if l1 = 'e' then
w = left(arg(1),length(arg(1))-1)
else
w = arg(1)
return w || 'ing'
pluralize: procedure expose v.
exc. = 0
exc.rose = 1
exc.breeze = 1
exc.branch = 1
exc.beach = 1
exc.glance = 1
exc.thrush = 1
exc.child = 1
exc.fox = 1
exc.moss = 1
exc.sunrise = 2
exc.lotus = 2
exc.gecko = 10
exc.cry = 11
w = arg(1)
uw = translate(w)
do while exc.uw > 0 & exc.uw list = value('v.n'exc.uw)
w = word(list,random(1,words(list)))
uw = translate(w)
end
if datatype(left(arg(1),1),'u') then
w = translate(left(w,1))substr(w,2)
select
when exc.uw = 0 then w = w || 's'
when exc.uw = 10 then w = w || 'es'
when exc.uw = 11 then w = left(w,2) || 'es'
otherwise
inform("Invalid pluralize exception" exc.uw)
exit
end
return w
InitVocab:
v. = ""
v.a1 = "quick wild small hot white green blue pink thin old light dark"
v.a1 = v.a1 "sad deep lost free far slow sharp blunt hard soft damp dry"
v.a1 = v.a1 "bare tight loose low cold clean proud swift gnarled flat"
v.a1 = v.a1 "strong weak young dull ill"
v.a2 = "open lofty empty eager even weary leaden fallen dismal serene"
v.a2 = v.a2 "languid potent silver awkward shallow pliant simple wrinkled"
v.a2 = v.a2 "falling waiting sighing smiling dreaming sleeping dying"
v.a2 = v.a2 "almond jasmine mournful leaping supple"
v.n1 = "oak tree grove stream brook hill branch rose leaf breeze pool"
v.n1 = v.n1 "root thrush song moon cry glance flame child fox lamb shell"
v.n1 = v.n1 "moss cave cliff rock beach shore wave sea hand path bark fern"
v.n2 = "shadow forest clearing hunter sparrow mountain cavern shelter"
v.n2 = v.n2 "seagull lantern sunrise gecko welcome egret doorway water"
v.n2 = v.n2 "prison temple valley spirit soldier blossom lotus maple"
v.v1 = "walk write sing play look fail stray climb grow speak flow live"
v.v1 = v.v1 "soar crawl creep stand wake sink swim turn sit jump stink"
v.v1 = v.v1 "dive strive shine glow fade move crave spin hide writhe"
v.v2 = "wander desire return whisper decline accept withdraw contend"
v.v2 = v.v2 "rebel retire despair arise wither wonder bubble flutter grumble"
v.v2 = v.v2 "enchant descend ascend command"
v.p1 = "in near past through from"
v.p2 = "under over behind beyond above below around"
v.r1 = "where when while as"
v.l1 = "the this my your his her the the the"
v.h2 = "Gichin Koshi Raiko the_man a_maid Tanto the_queen Moki R.J. Gorby"
v.h2 = v.h2 "Sanka the_monk Glad_Child Yoko"
tem. = ""
tem.1 = "A1 n1, a2 n1.+L1 a1, a2 n2 v1s.+A1 n1, a1 n2."
tem.2 = "P2 the a1 n1,+R1 the a2 n2 v1s,+I v1; the n1 v1s."
tem.3 = "The a1 n1 v1@;+It is the a2 n2.+V2@, I v1."
tem.4 = "The a2 n1 v1s+R1 a2 n2s v2.+Does the a1 n1 v1?"
tem.5 = "Not a1, not a2,+H2 comes to the n2.+L1 a1 n2 v1s."
tem.6 = "A1, a2, a2,+H2 v1s. H2 v2s,+V2@, v1@."
do i = 1 while tem.i ""
end
num_templates = i-1
return 0
** EOF
*/
It will generate haikus along the line of:
Swift lamb, shallow rock.
This hard, waiting prison hides.
Low moss, damp mountain.
Enjoy!
--
Unselfish actions pay back better
You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
-- Cass Whittington
First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.
-- Simon Firth
The ten thousand things
How long do any persist?
Netscape, too, has gone.
-- Jason Willoughby
I know this is all in fun so I'm posting these three that I found at some online contest (posted without permission, sorry).
The idea, however, that what you are all making are actually haiku is just silly. Yes, there is generally a turn at the end (more of a spinning outward), and yes, there is traditionally a word indicating a season (kigo), but not just the words fall or spring, there were whole catalogs of words with their traditional seasonal indication. Cats, for instance, indicate a haiku about Spring.
Also, remember the whole 5-7-5 thing comes from Japanese, a language very different from our own. You would be better off trying to write three lines that you could say smoothly in one breath (in other words, not 7 one syllable words). There is so much more involved, though, like alliteration and literary allusions.
I highly recommend you all go read some *real* haiku by the masters: Basho, Issan, Buson, and Shiki, they will explain what haiku is all about far better than I can.