Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
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From: Clayton Weaver <cgweav@eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: poetry and prolog
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Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 06:14:44 GMT
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It's a meta-thesauras (at a guess). Could be used like one of those
brain-storming programs where the point is to take ideas of focus, do some
phrase substitution and natural language grammatic transformation, and
invoke previously unrealized perspectives on the idea of focus through
restatement in different terms. In the case of poetry, one would be
looking for a thread of metaphor and rhythm as a seed for an unfolding
expression of image.

I do the same thing, though not to invoke poetry particularly, with
music. Looking at some passage that seems stale or doesn't appear to have
a graceful transition to the next scene or idea, I often "change the
tune", vary the genre or rhythm of background music that I may have been
listening to while writing.

One is looking for the "birth of an idea" or "birth of an image". A good
example is the "pencil passage" early in V. Nabokov's 
Transparent Things.

Regards, Clayton Weaver  cgweav@eskimo.com  (Seattle)

