“TransmoGrify” by Leonardo Flores

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“Taroko Gorge [2012 remix]” by Nick Montfort

“Tacoma Grunge” by Chuck Rybak

Screen shot from “Tacoma Grunge” by Chuck Rybak. White background with text in black and a couple of words in red. The text is all written like a poem: in verses. Text: “Title: Tacoma Grunge/ EMO boy educates the Tacoma clubs./ Others drink./ Girlfriend scolds the Tacoma drunks./ sing the jam shrooms throaty--/ Writers unsettle the cover designer./ Patron fondles the moshers./ promote the cheap beer--/ Basements advertise the flannel cats./ Arts exterminate./ Flannels scold the yous./ shred the finger style amazement--/ Backup drummer arrests the clowns”  At the left side upward corner the names Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg are marked over with a line and replaced in red by the names “Tacoma Grunge” and “Chuck Rybak”
Open “Tacoma Grunge” by Chuck Rybak

This generative poem is published as a blog posting and framed by the story of a young Scott Rettberg in graduate school, learning HTML and writing electronic literature at a time before his department had a website. Twenty years later, Rybak’s first attempt at writing e-literature is built upon Rettberg’s “Tokyo Garage” by changing the data set to evoke a cultural scene from the early 1990s.

This here is a re-remix (in a long line of remixes) of the generated nature poem Tokoro Gorge by Nick Montfort, as well as the urban, modern, and playful Tokyo Garage by Scott Rettberg. Nick Montfort wrote the code, which was remixed at the word level by Scott Rettberg, and I hacked Rettberg’s words to make the poem about something else, basically so I could learn something about electronic literature while experiencing it. Remixed May 15, 2012 by Chuck Rybak.

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“The Dark Side of the Wall” by Bob Bonsall

Screen shot from “The Dark Side of The Wall" by Bob Bonsall. A black background with a poem on the left and a list of names on the right. The text is written in white. Text: “Baaaaaaaaabe! Come to mother baby, let me hold you in my arms./ Call the schoolmaster!/ The lunatic is on the grass/ Waters takes over-/ Ooooooh, Ma, oooh Pa, must the show go on?/Run rabbit run/ I am just a new boy, stranger in this town./Waters takes over-/ Us and Them and after all we’re only ordinary men/ Teachers leave them kids alone/ Vera! Vera! What has become of you?/ Gilmour takes over-/ Oooh, Ma, Oooh Pa, must the show go on?/ think I’ll buy me a football team/ Have you broken any homes up lately?/ Waters takes over-“. List of names on the left, below the title of the poem: “Nick Montfort/Scott Rettberg/ J.R. Carpenter/ J.R. Carpenter/ J.R. Carpenter /Talan Memmolt/ Eric Snodgrass/ Mark Sample/ Maria Enberg/ Flourish Klink/ Andrew Pletkin/ Brendan Howell/ Adam Sylvain/ Leonardo Flores/ Alireza Mahzoon/ Senny Rae Tempest/ Helen Brgess/ Judy Malloy/ Bob Bonsall/ Lyrics from Dark Side of/ the Moon by Roger Waters/ Lyrics from The Wall by/ Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Bob Ezrin.” From the names “Nick Montfort” to “Judy Malley” all the names in between, including these two, are marked over by a line and are written in baby blue color.
Open  “The Dark Side of the Wall” by Bob Bonsall

This generative poem creates a mashup of lyrics from two famous Pink Floyd albums: The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon. The poem is organized into tercets followed by a single line in which Waters or Gilmour “takes over,” signaling shifts in leading roles in the band, which has a history of turbulent power struggles. Each tercet is assembled from lines from each album, lending both coherence at the line level, and intriguing juxtapositions that reveal some of Pink Floyd’s poetics.

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“Scholars Contemplate the Irish Beer” by Judy Malloy

“Tasty Gougère” by Helen Burgess

Open “Tasty Gougère” by Helen Burgess

“Tournedo Gorge” by Kathi Inman Berens

“Camel Tail” by Sonny Rae Tempest

“Snowball” by Alireza Mahzoon

Open “Snowball” by Alireza Mahzoon

“Inside the House” by Adam Sylvain

Screen capture of "Inside the House" by Adam Sylvain. A dark hallway with some illuminated sections; an open door can be seen at the end. Text: "Dark gaze the form. / Darks trudge the depths. / stamp the limitless damp black - / Step trudges the ground. / Step walls the grounds. / stamp the limitless deformed deathly shadowed - / Openings thrust the maze. / Levels panic the echos. / progress through the damp deathly real - / Shape gazes the crazes. / Fears panic. / Echos yell. / Step ranges the things. / stamp the damp dark real -"
Open “Inside the House” by Adam Sylvain

Based on Mark Z. Danielewsky’s House of Leaves, this generative poem imagines an endless hallway inside of a house, the novel’s macguffin. In the novel, as Navidson discovers that a hallway inside his new house is larger than the external dimensions of the house itself, and it is growing, he organizes an expedition into its depths, spending days exploring it without adequately mapping it. This “Taroko Gorge” remix was written by a student of Mark Sample’s “Post Print Fiction” course, and the mashup of the two works is an appropriate exploration of infinity, bound by human limits. As you enter the labyrinth that is this poem, think about how personified this hallway seems to be and what it means to explore the depths of its twisty little passages.

Read more about this work at ELMCIP.