Machine revolutionizes poetry

September 20, 1965

By Arthur Zeldin

…FLAME

You!
Provided she is this sad
forest amidst the sharp,
pale cold granite
I have been hearing the
sunlit flame.
The golden alabaster is
While greasy Joan doth keel
the pot.

SIGH

The candelabra does slip
You, you and you and you,
and O Whitman
Goodbye!
Hello!
Who will you be beyond
thee and steel and this
sad heaven?

Suppose, just for the sake of conversation, one were to analyze the last poem… Take the candelabra as an image of life falling away; the second line applies the message to all mankind, and begins an appeal to the spiritual solace of a great poet.

The third line says “goodbye” to life; the fourth, however, contains a recognition that within death there is rebirth; and the fifth develops this trend with a consideration of an after-life beyond the life of individuality, machine-age sterility and even beyond present, outmoded concepts of heaven.

It makes some sort of sense and the irony of it all is that it was written, not by Cohen, Ferlinghetti, or Ginsberg, or any of those boys, but by Mr. Apollinax the poetry machine. (Poetic license no. 30A60, Ontario, 1953)
Built by former U of T student Barry O’Neill (who is either very clever or else has a very good sense of humour—probably a bit of both) Mr. Apollinax is a little box, about 24 x 8 x 6 inches, which is actually a miniature computer.

Builder O’Neill has formulated an extremely complicated program for the machine based on the principle of relating mathematical constructs to the various parts of English grammar. “Feeding” the machine requires only that you push the button…

Of course I am not sure that the whole thing is not simply a very clever gag.

The suspicion grows when O’Neill tells me how he came to build the machine. “In 1961,” says he, “the police were preventing poets from reciting in Allan Gardens. I thought the poets needed some support; but since I couldn’t write poetry myself, I decided to build a machine which could.”

The poets reading in Allan Gardens were protesting a Toronto law that prohibited the reading of poetry in public. The law was overturned in 1963.

Leonard Cohen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg would have been popular and unconventional, anti-establishment poets of the day.
Sadly, O’Neill’s nifty little invention never caught on. Most of our poetry is still written by human beings.