Quick Muse: A Poem in 15 Minutes
Posted by: David Bunch
This article discusses a really cool website called QuickMuse in which poets and lyricists are given 15 minutes to compose verse in a sort of "head to head" match up.
This article discusses a really cool website called QuickMuse in which poets and lyricists are given 15 minutes to compose verse in a sort of "head to head" match up.
On Monday, the poet-songwriters were given 15 minutes to fill a blank computer screen with verse about a photograph QuickMuse provided. The idea, Gordon said, was to contrast Berman's and Roberts's poetry styles and, for fans of their music, to provide a window into their lyric-writing processes.This is crazy cool stuff!
The results of QuickMuse contests are available online -- not only in their final form, but also as simulations of the poets' creative process. During each second of competition, QuickMuse software captures images of the poets' screens. Afterward, the website replays the images in rapid succession, revealing the poets' writing as it occurred, word by word and line by line. "[W]e suspect QuickMuse will bring readers closer to the moment of composition than they have ever been before," Gordon writes on the website.
The process can be humbling. QuickMuse shows even world-class poets struggling for the right words. In one poem, former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky makes a typo. In another, Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon restarts the same line three times.
