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Tuesday, February 16th, 2016 | Buiteblik.
10 Kommentare op “Leon Retief. Boekhou en poësie”
February 16th, 2016 at 10:05 am
Leon, ek het jou stuk baie geniet. Dit is onderhoudend geskryf en propvol interessante inligting. Dankie hiervoor.
Daar is ’n rykdom van onderwerpe wat aangeroer word, maar ek wil net iets sê oor ’n paar van die aangehaalde gedigte en die begrip van “goeie” en “swak” poësie.
’n Australiese linguis, Michael Dalvean, het ’n rekenaar-program, of mens moet eerder sê, ’n algoritme, geskep wat Engelse gedigte se matevan “professionaliteit” vasstel en dan ’n punt toeken.
Ek haal hieronder aan uit Dalvean se akademiese geskrif wat beter toelig wat die “Poetry Assessor” doen.
Hierdie “Assessor” het heelwat opspraak verwek en die vere het alle kante toe gewaai. Sommige akademici en digters is hewig verontwaardig en gekant teen die “meganiese” manier waarop gedigte se waarde geskat word. Ek dink ook daar bestaan tans nog geen algoritme wat ’n gedig se waarde kan bepaal soos ’n mens dit kan doen nie. Maar dit bly ’n interessante oefening.
As mens mooi daaroor dink: gebeur dit nie dikwels dat een kritikus se oordeel radikaal verskil van andere nie? Die menslike oordeel is blykbaar nie onfeilbaar en op ’n vaste, eenvormige skaal gekalibreer nie.
Die “Poetry Assessor” kan deur hierdie skakel bereik word:
Dit is wat Dalvean onder andere te sê het.
Ranking Contemporary American Poems – Michael Dalvean
The purpose of this paper is to examine what distinguishes a “professional” poem
from an “amateur” poem. The central idea here is that professional poets are more likely than
amateur poets to have grasped the basic skills associated with writing poetry and have
therefore been able to produce poems of lasting quality. Amateurs, on the other hand, are less
likely to have mastered the basic required skills and are therefore less likely to have produced
work of lasting quality.
“The application is designed to determine whether a poem has the characteristics of a professional poem or, alternatively, an amateur poem. The methodology used is described fully here:
As an indication of how to interpret the placing of the poem on the scale, Sylvia Plath’s poem Crossing the Water scores 2.53 indicating that it shares more characteristics of a professional poem than an amateur poem. On the other hand, John Laws’ poem There are so many Things scores -2.05 indicating that it is closer to the amateur end of the spectrum.”
Hier is die tellings wat ’n paar gedigte wat Leon aanhaal, kry by Poetry Assessor”.
“Untitled” deur Richard Feynman – -0.0
“When I heard the learn’d astronomer” deur Walt Whitman – 0.9
“Cosmic gall” deur John Updike – 1.1
en die “professionele digter” Richard Kenney, kry die hoogste teling met sy gedig “Physics” – 1.7
Net om ’n tierboskat in die hoenderhok te gooi, plaas ek hier ’n gedig van die skaduagtige, sku digter-navorser, Phlip Mercator, wat tans in die Kalahari navorsingswerk doen.
Hierdie gedig kry 4.8 by die Assessor.
Do mosquitoes dream of electric sleep?
A mosquito was constructed
out of very tiny parts;
circuits embedded in nano chips,
the size of a hundred molecules.
The guided mosquito flies
into a dark bedroom,
sensing the infra-red
shape of the man.
It alights on the man’s forehead,
extrudes a proboscis
and penetrates the skin
to siphon up a tiny
The robotic mosquito
follows its homing beam,
carrying the genetic sample.
Back at base the blood is scrutinised,
tested and cultivated.
From this another man will be grown,
identical to the sleeping man,
but his bitter enemy.
Dankie de Waal. Ek moet beklemtoon dat ek beswaar het teen die tema/inhou van die gedigte deur Shitman, Poe, Keats en Updike, nie teen die “professionaliteit” van die betrokke gedigte nie. Jy noem dat een kritikus se mening radikaal van ‘n ander een mag verskil en dis beslis waar. Ek dink die beste voorbeelde wat ek nog gesien het is die kritiek wat soms gelewer word op opera-uitvoerings. Mens kry soms die indruk dat jy van twee verskillende produksies lees. Jy het so paar jaar gelede reeds van Dalvean se algoritme melding gemaak, ek het toe sommer vir die aardigheid “Roses are red” ensovoorts deur die algoritme gestuur. Ek vergeet hoeveel punte dit gekry het maar dit het nie goed gevaar nie. Ek dink Feynman was gelukkig om 0 te kry.
Nogtans, ek wonder oor daai algoritme en dit het my herhinner aan iets wat ek onlangs gelees het deur ‘n rekenaarwetenskaplike oor ‘n kongres wat hy bygewoon het en waar ook verskeie postmoderniste teenwoordig was (die kongres was in 1991). Hy het as satire ‘n nuwe inleidingsparagraaf vir sy voordrag geskryf wat bestaan uit ‘n totale betekenislose woordeslaai, saamgeflans uit woorde en frases wat die vorige dag deur die postmoderniste gebruik is. Ek het die betrokke paragraaf gaan optjop in reëls om daarvan ‘n “gedig” te maak en dit deur die algoritme gestuur.
is creating partially situated identities
out of actual or potential social reality
in terms of canonical forms of human contact,
thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative space
and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive strategy,
and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts,
each problematic to the other, collectively redefining
and reifying the paradigm
of the parable
of the metaphor.
Dit het 3,8 gekry.
February 17th, 2016 at 7:12 am
Dis groot pret, Leon 🙂 Ek wonder of kritici veel meer akkuraat is as hierdie “Professor Blik”.
Poetry Assessor :
This is an interesting discussion. However, I would like to emphasize that the Poetry Assessor is designed to hep editors. The idea is that, because most poetry submissions do not get read due to the sheer volume of them, it would be good to have a method of quickly identifying those that are most likely to be of high standard. Thus, given a of 100 poems, at least one of which is likely to be of lasting value, we can reduce this number to as many the editor has time to read. Perhaps the editor has time to read 10 poems. We therefore run all 100 through the Poetry Assessor and select the highest 10 scoring poems to read. Of those ten, the ones that are merely random text or obvious parodies, we eliminate immediately on reading them. Of those remaining, the quality is likely to be higher than the quality of the 90 that we did not read.
One other point worth mentioning: the system is calibrated on poems by amateurs and by ‘professional’ poets. You can generate a high (or low) score by typing random text. However, this does not mean the system cannot recognize a good poem. As an example of how important it is to use a device in the manner for which it was designed, consider measuring the heartbeat of a dog with a device calibrated on humans. We would come to a very unreliable interpretation of the coronary health of the canine. We would not, hopefully, criticize the heart monitoring machine. Similarly, the Poetry Assessor is calibrated on poems and the scores generated are only interpretable where poems have been used to generate a score.
I hope this helps clear up some of the debate.
Thank you for your input. I presume you are Michael Dalvean?
Last year, when I compiled a selection of my poems for publication on one of my blogs, I used the Poetry Assessor in exactly the way you describe. I selected only poems with high scores. Some, however, I rejected because I thought they were not up to scratch. On the other hand, I included some poems with lower scores because I thought they had merit.
My wife had not read the explanation of your algorithm’s procedure, and she theorised that “originality” was one of the factors that was taken into “consideration” when a poem was evaluated. (The words in inverted commas need to be defined more precisely, but I leave that to the reader).
I explained to her, as best I could, that it was not the case, and that other factors, like shorter words, more commonly used words, words with fewer syllables tend to increase a poem’s value according to the algorithm.
This sounds a little counter-intuitive. Should a poem not be “profound” with wonderfully complicated and “fancy” words? Evidently not 🙂
I like to translate poems by Tomas Tranströmer, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and others. Their poems tend to contain few elaborate words, rather words that I can find in a simple dictionary.
Another poet whose work I like very much is Billy Collins. What a pleasure to read his clear, reader-friendly, yet insightful and sometimes profound poetry.
“But the morning light is only the first line
in the play of this day–”
Original, fresh, visual and powerful. Yet, mostly words of one syllable.
This poem is given 2.1 by the PA.
Interesting. I should point out that 2.1 is quite a respectable score for a poem.
The issue of profundity is a difficult one. The main issue is, how do we measure profundity?
I should point out that the Poetry Assessor is calibrated on contemporary American poems. For a 400 year perspective across the English speaking universe of poetry you might find it useful to look at the following:
February 22nd, 2016 at 8:34 am
Thank you for the link. I’m following it up.
This is one of the many definitions of “profound”:
One could possibly conceive of an algorithm that could thoroughly examine a subject, that “entered deeply”. But to my knowledge, there is (yet) no AI device that can think the way humans do, and that could therefore achieve “insight” and “understanding”. It seems profundity is beyond the reach of the Poetry Assessor at this point in time.
And it is not all that easy for a human being to identify profundity. My profundity could be your hackneyed phrase. Take the following lines from the Collins poem:
“I could be looking up at a ghost
in the shape of a window,”
I declare those lines profound. The concepts of the (dim) window and a ghost are so cleverly intertwined and lead into many different avenues of thought. This is what I call a “poeson” – a series of connected concepts that run “deeply” into various idea levels.
February 28th, 2016 at 5:06 pm
Woes heerlike stuk lekker-lees Leon! Dit het my ‘n rukkie geneem om hierby uit te kom, maar is ek nou baie bly ek kon ‘n momentjie afknyp daarvoor.
Wiskunde, die wetenskappe, boekhou, musiek en die digkuns.
Kinders word nie meer metrum in die digkunsklas geleer nie. Toe ek dit Vrydag vir graad aggies (die ‘slim musiekklas’) wys (via Vernon Scannell se “My dog”), was hulle heeltemal verstom. Ja, digters tel vertel ek hulle (o.a. n.a.v. Daniel Hugo wat homself as ‘n lettergreepteller beskryf), soos musikante, soos wetenskaplikes, soos boekhouers. Hulle tel en gebruik woordeboeke, om woorde te kry wat kan inpas. So, kan julle nou sien hoekom julle taalklas net so belangrik soos julle wiskundeklas is?
Nog vyf dae van skoolgee oor (dan is dit eksamen) en dit is dan ook die laaste keer wat ek met skoolgee uithelp. Ek rui die kinders teveel op met my styl van klasgee en dan maak hulle my doodmoeg om nie te praat die spanning oor die lawaaierige klasse wat my slapelose nagte gee nie.
“wat begin by een plus een
geheel en al ’n miljoen te veel.”
“as light unrav-
begins for you.”
Ek sien Poetry Foundation vertel van Kenney se digkuns dat: “Such poetry is not afraid of having intellect, or requiring it”.
Leeon Retief :
Dankie Maria. Ek sou nogal graag by een van jou klasse wou insit. Wat gaan jy doen wanneer jy nou klaar is met skoolgee?
Indien jy belangstel kan jy gaan naslaan oor poliwater, nog ‘n voorbeeld van wetenskap met ‘n minder as gelukkige uitkoms alhoewel dit langer as N-strale geneem het om tot ‘n konklusie te kom en daar darem ook ‘n mate van regverdiging was vir die aanvanklike hipotese. Poliwater laat mens natuurlik dadelik dink aan “Cat’s Cradle” deur Kurt Vonnegut waarmee jy seker bekend is en waarin “ice-nine” voorkom. En net vir die interessantheid, daar bestaan twaalf verskillende kristallyne vorms van waterys maar net om jou gerus te stel: die een bekend as ys nege kan net bestaan by temperature onder -100C.