A Poem

I'm happy to be presenting my newest Processing project today! We were to create a program that generates a poem using words from a textbook. My poem is in the form of an early 20th century poetry form known as Cinquain. The poetry form was originally done by Adelaide Crapsey, and was inspired by haikus. Cinquain is generally made up of 5 lines of poetry in the following form:

One noun
Two Adjectives
Three verbs
Three adjectives
Two nouns

One website gives the following example:

Tiger
Striped, beautiful
Looks, listens, sniffs
Sleek, restless, hungry cat
Hunter!

The cinquain poetry form speaks to me because it is sharp and simple. I especially wanted to use the form for my piece because the poem was going to be someone random. I felt that because the poem would be somewhat jibberish already, I wanted to use a poem and poetry form that would give the feel that the poem was somehow thought out by a human. I'm excited at the fact that the viewers tend to see patterns and find meanings, and that is what I am hoping to bring across with the use of ciniquain.

The textbook that I pulled my words from comes from a life guarding class that I once took. The manual is called "Lifeguarding", and it is put out by the American Red Cross. I pulled my words from page 97. I liked the idea of using a medical/EMT textbook because of the rich use of body parts and wound terminology. Because I knew that the poem had to be powerful, I chose a textbook with powerful words.

The programming for this piece was difficult in some areas, and more simple in others. I especially liked designing the look of the piece. Choosing the fonts and the colors were especially fun for me. I chose to go with a sort of graffiti look with the font. I chose that because again, I wanted the poem to carry on that sharp feel that the cinquain brings. Most of the colors change with the movement of the mouse. I wanted them to be bright and yet, at times, dark and sinister to play on the sometimes gory words taken from the life guarding manual. The nouns, adjectives, and verbs are all different sizes so that the reader may more easily distinguish between them and to give a slightly more interesting appeal aesthetically.

And now without further ado..... A few screenshots of poetry: