Rob Zseleczky on computer-generated poetry

I often go searching for the past online. And thus I found (via Google Books) a letter about the possibilities of computer-generated poetry by my friend Rob Zseleczky, published in the February 1983 issue of the computer magazine Byte. Strange: a few days ago I took screenshots of the pages with the letter and did some cutting and pasting to make a column of text. And now this issue of Byte is available only in Snippet view.

[Rob Zseleczky, “Computer Poetry: Art or Craft?” Byte, February 1983.]

The key passage, to my mind:

An artist may draw upon any or all of his life’s history in order to pass judgment on a single word. His intellect, his moral integrity, his honesty, his passion, his love, his hope, his hate, his fear, his skepticism, his faith — in short, the sum of the poet’s whole existence gives him the ability to make artistic judgments. And a sense of tradition supports the artist’s individuality, which includes his powers of artistic discernment. Thus, in our ever-changing, prone-to-forgetfulness world, the popularity of computers is assured, but computers still lack what Keats called “the knowledge of contrast, feeling for light and shade, all that information (primitive sense) necessary for a poem.”

If you could accurately enter your whole life into a computer without leaving the minutest fact out, then the computer could possess a chance of becoming artistic. But even then the computer would have to be considered the protégé of its programmer. For now, computers may be profitably used as electronic thesauri, as servants to the new craft of electronic poetry-writing. As far as the art of poetry is concerned, computers will have to wait.

Right on, Rob. Judging by the poems I ordered up from ChatGPT this past weekend, computers are still waiting.

Related reading
Rob Zseleczky (1957–2013) : All RZ posts

O.B. Rude Drug Co.

[O.B. Rude Drug Co. 5003 Fifth Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Looking at this photograph, I went back and forth: Rude’s, Rex, Rude’s, Rex. I decided to go with Rude’s Drugs — I like how its sign (look closely) turns R into Rx. And it’s just as well, because after looking into Rude’s Drugs, I couldn’t find a thing about Rex Repairs. If it’s Rex Shoe Repair Service, as I suspect it it, the owner declared bankruptcy on April 13, 1940.

The O.B. Rude Drug Co. had a much longer life. Ola B. Rude established a pharmacy at this address in 1908. He and two partners incorporated the business in 1919. In 1931 and 1932 Rude ran the same ad again and again in Brooklyn newspapers:

[Brooklyn Times-Union, December 7, 1931.]

A Norske Apotek? A Norwegian pharmacy. Wikipedia on Sunset Park: “By the 1910s there was a growing Scandinavian district. Portions of the neighborhood became known as “Finntown” and “Little Norway.” Of Bay Ridge, just south of Sunset Park, Wikipedia says, “Until the early 1970s, Bay Ridge was dominated by its Norwegian community.”

Rude died in October 1931, as reported in a compilation of Brooklyn deaths in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He left $10 to his wife Evelyn, who left him in 1927. Two sisters in Norway received $1000 each. Everything else — what the paper called “the residue” — went to Rude’s son Christopher.

In 1938, a new advertisement:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 2, 1938.]

In 1955 and 1956 Christopher — now Christoffer — appeared in the Bay Ridge Home Reporter in photographs of gatherings of Scandinavian-American Business Association.

[Bay Ridge Home Reporter, March 127, 1955.]

And here’s a photograph of the younger Rude with a fancy cake.

Rude Drug was still going as late as 1960. Here’s a story with an unusual headline. Do click for Mixtura Brita and more:

[“Norwegian Compounds in Aura of Old Bklyn.” Bay Ridge Home Reporter, November 4, 1960. Click for a readable view.]

No wonder the store was still going. It gave good service:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 30, 1931.]

Here is the final item I discovered, a brief biography with a photograph:

[Norske utvandrere og forretningsdrivende i Amerika: Utgis som minde i anledning av hundreaaret for den Norske indvandring til Amerika [Norwegian emigrants and business operators in America: Published as a commemoration on the occasion of the centennial of the Norwegian immigration to America] New York and Oslo: J. Burner, 1927.]

A translation, via DeepL, Google Translate, and a small bit of sprachgefühl:

Ola Bertram Rude was born on June 12, 1875 in Drammen, the son of the late photographer Rude. He departed from Oslo on May 27, 1902 and arrived in New York on his birthday. Immediately after his arrival he was employed as manager of a pharmacy in Brooklyn. After six years, in 1908, he bought his own pharmacy and established himself at 5003 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, where he still does business. Rude graduated as a pharmacist from the University of Oslo and is the only Norwegian-graduated pharmacist in the eastern states. He has one of the largest and best Norwegian pharmacies in America, and is noted for his conscientious efficiency and thorough knowledge of his profession.

He might also be noted for a more than slight resemblance to the actor Thomas Mitchell.

The Rude stretch of commerce — one side of one Brooklyn block — gives a nice sense of urban retail density. On the corner, Kane’s Men’s Clothing, followed by Rude’s, Rex Repairs, The Bargain Center, Merit Shoes, Leonard’s Meat Market, Weisslite Paints, O’Malley’s Tavern, P. Gleicher Floor Coverings, a Paints and Hardware store, S & L Public Market, and Fancy Fruit & Vegetables.

Google Maps shows no. 5003 for sale in 2022. Before that it was a Party Fair store.

*

February 15: Just one more. A reader found an advertisement in a Swedish-American newspaper published in Sioux City, Iowa. From the Svenska monitoren, October 6, 1922:


A translation, via DeepL, Google Translate, and a small bit of sprachgefühl:

ATTENTION, GOUT SUFFERERS! Rude’s Rheumatic Remedy should be tried by anyone suffering from gout in one of its many forms. Many are those who bless this wonderful medicine. Price per bottle $1.00, payable with order.

Rude’s Specific Capsules — “The Pink Capsules” — prevent and quickly relieve the grippe, influenza, malaria, and all kinds of fever. There should be a package in every home — 25¢ and 50¢ per box, postage paid.

These and many other excellent home remedies were prepared by the famous Norwegian pharmacist and chemist O. B. Rude, and provided by 0.B. Rude Drug Company, Inc. Manufacturing Chemists & Apothecaries. Agents wanted.

Rude had quite a reach. Thanks, reader.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stella Zawitowski, is a toughie. It took me half an hour, with the greatest difficulty in the northwest and southeast. I kept looking and looking at clues, “Over and over and over and . . .” (30-D, ten letters). And eventually answers turned up, correct ones. Much difficulty, little joy, save for 37-A.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

2-D, ten letters, “‘Fighting fuel’ of WWII.” I thought it had to be a foodstuff.

18-A, ten letters, “Craft presaged by da Vinci.” My first thought was HELICOPTER. I have to nitpick: the name is Leonardo. A helpful editor at the British Journal of Aesthetics once turned my da Vinci into Leonardo, and I have never forgotten.

28-D, five letters, “Part of a vegan crunchy sandwich.” I can’t imagine it, but if you say so.

31-D, ten letters, “Trash-talk.” I took a shot, thinking No, that can’t be. But it was.

33-A, five letters, “Domelike dispenser.” A bit farfetched.

34-A, nine letters, “Guy a la mode?” See 33-A.

38-A, nine letters, “Ear or eye.” Good clueing.

42-A, five letters, “Nickname on a singer’s ’72 40 Across album.” A lot of work to figure out these five letters, even knowing that 40-A, five letters, “First.”

51-A, eight letters, “Major trading partner of Turkey.” Next they’ll be asking for principal exports.

52-D, four letters, “Power source of little power.” Really?

My favorite in this puzzle: 37-A, five letters, “Get the 411, once.” So hard to see, these days.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“The witty outsider”?

On the PBS NewsHour, David Brooks just characterized Donald Trump** in 2016 as “sort of the witty outsider.” Wut?

Three more posts about Brooks
He misunderstands the term SNOOT : He says that everyone in the 1980s wanted “more integration and less bigotry” : On Bono’s “raucous go-go”

[Two asterisks: two impeachments.]

From Cartoons

A teaser, not a spoiler. Jeffrey Cartwright will go on to provide an extended summary of Cartoons.

Steven Millhauser, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright (1972).

If this passage isn’t enough to move someone to read the novel, I don’t know what is.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Another ChatGPT fail

From a 500-word ChatGPT production:

Lillian Mountweazel was a famous photographer and sculptor in the 20th century. She was born in Bangs, Ohio, on May 11, 1942 and died in an explosion on August 2, 1973, while on assignment for a photographic encyclopedia. Mountweazel’s work was known for its unusual themes and the inventive use of light and shadows, and was a major influence on the American art scene of the 1960s and 1970s.

Hundreds of words follow. But what ChatGPT doesn’t understand is that Lillian Mountweazel was not a real person. I won’t tell if you won’t.

The Lillian Virginia Mountweazel Research Collection has much more about Mountweazel’s life and work.

Related posts
A 100-word blog post generated by ChatGPT : I’m sorry too, ChatGPT : Spot the bot : Teachers and chatbots : Imaginary lines from real poems

“THAT AIN’T HAY”

Edwin courts the mysterious and sometimes terrifying Rose Dorn. A partial inventory.

Steven Millhauser, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright (1972).

Does Steven Millhauser understand certain varieties of American childhood? Does he ever.

This passage made me think of Drake’s clickers, little toys once included in boxes of Drake’s cakes. And my goodness — there are Drake’s clickers for sale at eBay.

*

March 2: Elaine and I realized it only after reading more Millhauser: Rose Dorn’s name suggests Dornröschen, Little Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty. The name turns up repeatedly in Millhauser’s fiction.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

“Raucous go-go”

You know what Robert Caro says: Turn every page. Thus I found myself looking at a David Brooks profile of Bono in the December Atlantic, “The Too-Muchness of Bono.” For your consideration:

Rowing for heaven by day and drinking with superstars by night — Bono’s spiritual adventure is the greatest high-wire act in show business. You can’t help wondering which way he’ll go. Will he be ruled by his rage or his compassion? Can he find inner stillness amid the raucous go-go of his life? Can he keep his focus on the celestial spheres when the people on the beach at Nice are so damn sexy? Can he die to self, or has his permanent tendency toward self-seriousness and pomposity become too great? If the guy is so concerned with his soul, why did he spend so much time writing about his hair? The ultimate questions at the center of it all are the same ones that have haunted American history: Can you be great and also good? Can you serve the higher realm while partying your way through this one?

And while I think of it, I’ll recommend the David Brooks episode of Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri’s podcast If Books Could Kill. I’ll recommend all the other episodes too.

Two more posts about Brooks
He misunderstands the term SNOOT : He says that everyone in the 1980s wanted “more integration and less bigotry”

Beauty , defined, undefined

The CEO of Coty, Sue Y. Nabi, is writing to dictionaries to encourage new definitions of beauty. There is of course a hashtag: #beautyundefined. Nabi is quoted in Harper’s Bazaar:

“Of course, not all people are impacted by, or feel excluded by these definitions. But the implicit ageism and sexism in the examples were born in a different time. We believe it’s time to bridge the gap — time to bring the definition to where society is today. By changing the definition, if more people feel included — feel beautiful — there will be a ripple effect which touches us all.”

It [the campaign] doesn’t suggest a specific alternative, though. “At Coty, we believe that no one can control or dictate what is, or is not, beautiful,” Nabi says. Indeed, the campaign aims to “undefine” rather than simply “redefine” beauty, so that no one feels excluded by the definition or examples that accompany it.

There’s a certain incoherence in this effort: is the call for new definitions, or no definitions?

Merriam-Webster’s entry for beauty includes this definition and sample sentences:

: a beautiful person or thing
His new car’s a real beauty.

especially : a beautiful woman
She was a great beauty in her day.

And from the American Heritage Dictionary entry :

One that is beautiful, especially a beautiful woman.

The ageism of “in her day” could easily be excised. But the especially is reasonable: it is the case that the words beauty and beautiful have more often described women than men. And it’s important to notice that neither dictionary states what constitutes beauty. M-W :

the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit

And AHD :

a quality or combination of qualities that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is often associated with properties such as harmony of form or color, proportion, authenticity, and originality

Does Nabi realize that these definitions apply not just to people but to art, music, &c.? Either way, there’s something risible about the head of a cosmetics conglomerate pushing for a redefinition — or undefinition — of beauty.

Don’t miss the photograph that accompanies the Harper’s Bazaar article, showing models wearing lots of makeup. At least one model appears to be wearing colored contact lenses.

A related post
Being wrong about beauty

Music history, rhyming?

LL Cool J, in the PBS documentary series Fight the Power: How Hip-Hop Changed the World:

“DJs intially are like bandleaders, right? They were like Count Basie. And then the same way in bebop that people started singing to those riffs, how the vocalists became front and center, and how Count Basie moved a little bit to the background, that’s kind of the same thing that happened with the DJs and the MCs. You know, history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.”

It’s a passing moment, but one that caught my attention. Suffice it to say that history here is neither repeating nor rhyming. Or suffice it to say that the purported history recounted here, of Count Basie taking a back seat to singers singing bebop riffs, has no basis in history.

This series, which I learned about when watching the PBS NewsHour last night, is filled with great archival footage. There’s an awkward shift from an emphasis on the turmoil of the 1960s to hip-hop, which began as party music, for dancing, socializing, and good times. But then Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” comes in, and the documentary’s emphasis turns to music as cultural commentary and protest. What the documentary fails to mention is that the group was reluctant to record that song. Melle Mel, in 1992: “We didn’t actually want to do ‘The Message’ because we was used to doing party raps and boasting how good we are and all that.”

[Quote Investigator covers history repeating and rhyming.]