perl script/shell.pl
Textforms is an interactive poetry template engine.
If you seed a random number generator with numbers, then it stands to reason that you should seed a poetry generator with poetry.
Poems you create will be saved in poetry/textforms.txt. If you want
to save poems somewhere else, just put the path to the file (including the file name) in an environment variable called POETRY_FILE, eg:
export POETRY_FILE=~/doggerel.txt
The following poetic forms are supported:
- Haiku
- Linked Haiku
- Couplet
- Linked Couplets
- Sonnet
- English Sonnet
- Italian Sonnet
- Quatrain
- Villanelle
- Pantoum
The shell runs until you force it to quit by pressing Control C.
Textforms allows you to define a dictionary of words you don't want to be allowed in your poems.
Only a couple of example words are forbidden by default. You can
forbid more words by editing lib/dictionary_of_forbidden_words
This practice was directly inspired by John Ashbery, who is assiduous about avoiding the re-use of words that he has already used in the past.
In order to run Textforms, you need the Lingua module from CPAN.
Lingua is used to display the line numbers while you are composing.
Use the following command (you may need to sudo)
cpan Lingua::Any::Numbers
If you're on Windows and that fails, try installing Strawberry Perl, then rerunning the command.
Don't trust the line numbers when you are composing Pantoums. Line numbers should be correct for other poetic forms, however.