This week we learned how to use Python to transform text. It took me a while to settle on a source text for this project, but I eventually settled on a Jack Underwood poem I found on the Poetry Foundation. Here is the full piece:
I was mostly drawn to this poem because of the implied mental state of the narrator. In my mind, he/she is one of the following: a child with an active imagination, someone with a mental illness and probably in a home, or someone with alzheimers/dementia (I supposed one could argue that the last two are the same thing). There is something off about what the narrator says and as a reader I can’t help but feel that there is something dark just beneath the surface.
Source text in hand, I started exploring different Python scripts to alter the text and bring out the dark undertone I mentioned earlier. For this I relied heavily on text translation, replicating the tr command in terminal to replace specific words and phrases with new words and phrases. I also find() method to isolate sentences with certain punctuation.
The most significant change made by this program was changing every instances of the word “I” to “it”. This simple change introduced a new, mysterious and creepy character to the poem. Suddenly, the narrator was no longer alone, and the story within the poem seemed to be unfolding against his/her will.
I kept changing words and phrases until a new poem emerged with two distinct characters: the disembodied “it” and the helpless narrator. I piped the python script instead_of2.py with to the UNIX command sort to reorganize the text and saved it to it’s own file titled Bless Television, because of the first line of the new poem. I saved the “unsorted” version of the text to a separate file titled It_Sat. Bless Television is obviously the less creepy of the two.
Here are the resulting two poems in full:
Bless Television
Bless the television, damn this chair of four wooden legs.
Slowly, it sat down, because there was an empty chair.
Some minerals. Some salty, bright minerals in the dark.
The bird came in, little devil, and it scowled at its, ferociously
What good, it wondered laterally, might befall an ancient
and it closed my eyes briefly, looking into my soul,
hardworking soul, like a microchip destined for heaven.
it felt like calling my parents, but thought, in a scheming way,
it spent that afternoon staring at my bits, enamored.
it spent that evening clapping loudly in the garden,
striking its chin, poor thing. We watched the news together
to do so would be too easy, so instead it opened the curtains.
unseen in the earth, deep beneath a human tragedy?
It Sat
Slowly, it sat down, because one chair was empty.
Bless the television, damn this chair of four wooden legs.
it felt like calling my parents, but thought, in a scheming way,
to do so would be too easy, so instead it opened the curtains.
and it closed my eyes briefly, looking into my soul,
hardworking soul, like a microchip destined for heaven.
The bird came in, little devil, and it scowled at its, ferociously
striking its chin, poor thing. We watched the news together
What good, it wondered laterally, might befall an ancient
unseen in the earth, deep beneath a human tragedy?
Some minerals. Some salty, bright minerals in the dark.
it spent that afternoon staring at my bits, enamored.
it spent that evening clapping loudly in the garden,