Author's Note

As a means of introduction, the following poems were written in collaboration with the BABBLE text generator. They are, shall we say, text-generator-assisted. Without getting into too much detail, what I did was highlight sections from various encyclopedia entries & import them into the generator, as well as some of my own riffings. From there I morphed lines, phrases, & sometimes lifted “as is” output from the generator & then pasted this raw data into a new document which formed the “notes” for each poem. At this point the generator was out of the mix, & it was just me and the “notes” & the pitch for a poem. Sometimes the encyclopedia selection was related to the biography in question, but more often than not it was simply something I was interested in, or thought would be interesting, or odd, or difficult to pull off. But that’s enough prattle, it’s half-past the how, & these folks need to try to walk on their own.

For Karoline Wileczek, Meredith Poppy Little, my folks Jackie & Benny Little, & the whole extended loopy Little clan. Much thanks to Spout Press, the Fuori Collective (publisher of a couple of these pieces), Muse-Apprentice-Guild.com (ditto) & the Delaware Division of the Arts, & of course, to William Slaughter, for his encouragement, his ideas, & his forum.

— Jeffrey Little

Contents | Mudlark No. 22