RE: Insight into perl poetry?

[mcwee]

I agree with BBQ's criteria on this one. I'm actually a really big fan of perl poetry. It's very existence doesn't just confirm teh flexibility and grace of the language, but also says alot about the community, and teh diverse group that find programming an accesible pastime when working in perl.

As for your stuff:

for me, the principle aesthetic problem with An anonymous tale is that the poem needs the comments in order to make sense. In perl poetry, I feel that comments should be strictly avoided, if possible (they basically amount to footnotes, and a contemporary poem which is mash without the footnoes has some problems. The poem itself should be able to make itself understood without a scaffolding of exposition being constructed around it.)

Your own observation re: the failure of shifting themes pretty much hit the nail on the head: teh underlying perl isn't strong. This is the equivalent of a sonnet which has fine text but crappy prosody. Teh importance of the perl-ness of a perl poem is comparable to the importance of rythm in an English poem (not that this is on-topic or anything, but the most consistent formal concern in English poetry, from Old English through hip-hop, is a concern for rythm-- to write works which posses what Mr. Busta Ryhmes calls "flow." Prosody = flow (more or less), and apoem without flow is pretty much dead in the water.)

By the by, my favorite perl poem thus far is down.pl-- it's a beautiful, graceful little hunk of code, in addition to being a very touching sentiment. It's good poetry enhance by being presented as good code (just as the contemporary sonnets of Mark Jarman are well articulated statements of the human condition enhanced be being presented with formal rigor.)
          (note on the Jarman poems: I personally prefer the third sonnet down.)

I hope these critiques and trivia are helpful-- feel free to /msg me sometime if you wanna talk about it. I'm pretty (almost irrationally) enthusastic about perl poetry.

The Autonomic Pilot; it's FunkyTown, babe.