{"id":2243,"date":"2012-04-22T18:20:41","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T23:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2012-04-22T18:20:41","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T23:20:41","slug":"computer-generated-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2012\/04\/22\/computer-generated-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Computer Generated Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of the most creative ideas spawn not from inspiration, but pure boredom. Michael Squitieri (Brooklyn ’14) launched \u201cCraigslistpoetry.com<\/a>\u201d after searching the Internet for a means of entertainment.\u00a0Squitieri, born and raised in Dyker Heights, is a Computational Math major which is a field that incorporates mathematics and computer science.
\n\"By<\/p>\n

“The idea began around\u00a0Christmas\u00a0time while surfing on a website called someecards.com<\/a>, a humor website famous for its clever e-cards,” said Squitieri.\u00a0“One of the posts on the site was a list of the ‘Top Ten ‘Missed Connections’ ads on Craigslist That We Hope Never Lead to a Connection’. \u00a0I found them really funny so I started looking at the missed connections page regularly. While reading them, I discovered that some have a real poetic quality, and I thought it would be great to combine lines from multiple posts to create poetry.”<\/p>\n

\u201cMissed Connections\u201d is a compilation of posts from people who saw someone somewhere, but missed the chance to connect and are trying to find them through Craigslist.\u00a0 Some are hilariously funny, others are inappropriate, and some are simply desperate.\u00a0 Squitieri wrote a program that randomly pulls together lines from these ads and creates poetry — found poetry.<\/p>\n

Found poetry is a form of poetry that requires that the words used be from a text. \u00a0The point is to change line breaks and skip words to create your masterpiece. \u00a0The New York Times ran an article on \u00a0found poems from the “Missed Connections” section, but that was different. \u00a0The New York Times was using one<\/em>\u00a0post and changing the line breaks, Michael’s program uses all<\/em>\u00a0the posts found in the New York City Missed Connections section.<\/p>\n

The only problem remaining now was, \u201cHow do you make a website that allows people to access the program?\u201d\u00a0 Using trusty old Google, some open course Harvard classes, and incorporating what he had already learned in computer classes at Brooklyn\u00a0College,\u00a0 Squitieri had an arsenal of skills he needed to create a website that would interact with web surfers. <\/p>\n

“You’d be surprised how much you learn just from studying already popular webpages,” said Squitieri. For style, he turned to Pinterest, an up-and-coming website that allows one to create a digital pinboard for ideas.\u00a0 He also created a Facebook page and a Twitter account. He tweets a new poem every two hours; in the future, Squitieri hopes to share his Craigslist poetry through facebook as well.<\/p>\n

Is it Found Poetry, or is it something\u00a0completely\u00a0new and different? Check it out, and decide for yourself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>www.craigslistpoetry.com<\/span><\/a><\/span>
\nFollow @craigslistpoems<\/a>
\nLike on Facebook<\/a>
\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the most creative ideas spawn not from inspiration, but pure boredom. Michael Squitieri (Brooklyn ’14) launched \u201cCraigslistpoetry.com\u201d after searching the Internet for a means of entertainment.\u00a0Squitieri, born and raised in Dyker Heights, is a Computational Math major which is a field that incorporates mathematics and computer science. “The idea began around\u00a0Christmas\u00a0time while surfing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,31],"tags":[520,555,1067,1111,1701],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-brooklyn","tag-computer-science","tag-craigs-list","tag-innovation","tag-java","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}