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Poetry automat

poesie_automat · permutation · validated

A flap-board of six lines by six modules by ten alternatives, composing a six-line poem at the push of a button — ten to the thirty-sixth of them. The checker asks whether a given poem is one the board admits: each line is cut into its six modules and every piece must be one of that module's ten alternatives.

Provenance

  • Source: Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Einladung zu einem Poesie-Automaten (conceived 1974); machine realised for Lyrik am Lech, Landsberg am Lech, 2000
  • Attribution: primary — a named author, work and year this catalogue stands behind
  • Checkability: self — decidable from the text and its parameters alone
  • Attested: author-stated — the originator set this rule down

Details

  • Kind: both
  • Languages: de
  • Requires: —
  • Deterministic: yes
  • Also known as: Poesieautomat, Einladung zu einem Poesie-Automaten
  • In other languages: Landsberger Poesieautomat (de), Automate à poésie (fr)

Notes

Six lines, six modules, ten alternatives: 10^36, and all four numbers are stated by the German Wikipedia article on the Landsberger Poesieautomat. The figure is recomputed from the shipped modules rather than quoted, and it is an integer — metrics["combinations"] is a float and cannot hold it exactly. No lexicon of Enzensberger's ships here. He died in 2022, so his word lists are in copyright until 2092; the mechanism is not, and it is the mechanism this row catalogues. The 360 fillers in data/devices/poesieautomat_2000.yaml were written for this project without reference to his lists, on the same footing as the substitute strips the cent_mille_milliards fixture carries for Queneau. How they were made is what can be said; word-for-word non-overlap with a list this project has never read could not be checked, and is not claimed. Three design rules are what make every one of the 10^36 readings grammatical German rather than most of them: the article is folded into the noun so agreement never crosses a module boundary, everything after the subject is an adjunct, and every verb is intransitive third person singular present. Lines 2, 4 and 6 carry no predicate at all, which the sources give as the feature that made the automat programmable in the first place. Grammaticality is a property of the module design and is verified by reading generated poems, not by the checker: check asks only whether a poem is one the board admits.

Prompt hint

Write six lines of six blocks each; after the subject everything is an adjunct, and every verb is intransitive third person singular present.

Parameters

Name Type Default Description
device string poesieautomat_2000 Which device to read the modules from.

Examples

eine-anzeige-die-der-automat-zeigen-kann

de — this text satisfies the procedure.

Am Ersten schrumpft das Amt mit Bedacht immer laut Ansage
Der Asphalt im Regen über Land vermutlich auf Dauer laut Akte
Hinter Glas altert die Kantine bekanntlich vor der Tür per Zufall
Die Fabrik auf Antrag monatelang trotz Wind unter Last ab sofort
Das Blech kreist anderswo vor Nässe vor Sonntag bei Hitze
Freitags das Gerüst am Fenster im Abseits unentwegt aus Zement

Source: constructed example; produced by spinning the board (seed 5), then checked. The seed was chosen rather than taken: no word stem repeats anywhere in the six lines, and no preposition heads more than three of the thirty-six flaps, so the case shows the board rather than an unlucky draw from it. The schema is Enzensberger's; the 360 fillers are original to this project, as the catalogue row and the device file both say.

eine-zweite-anzeige-die-keine-klappe-wiederholt

de — this text satisfies the procedure.

Montags vergilbt das Werk gegen bar inzwischen über Nacht
Die Ampel unter Eis am Silo vielerorts bei Wind von Süden
Im Depot schimmelt das Rohr zumeist unter Null in Sicht
Der Turm ohne Strom sicherlich um drei bei Frost in Serie
Die Fracht zittert erneut nach Bedarf auf Reisen gegen Hitze
Abends das Tor auf Achse mit Glas mitunter ab Dienstag

Source: constructed example; seed 82, chosen because all thirty-six of its modules show a different flap from the case above — so the pair covers 72 flaps rather than 30 twice — and because it repeats no word stem either. That disjointness is not taken on trust: the seed was found by segmenting candidate texts back to flap indices and comparing, and test_the_two_positive_fixtures_share_no_flap re-derives it from this file on every run rather than reading it here.

ein-wort-das-auf-keiner-klappe-steht

de — this text does not satisfy the procedure.

Am Ersten schrumpft das Amt mit Bedacht immer laut Ansage
Der Asphalt im Regen über Land vermutlich auf Dauer laut Akte
Hinter Glas altert die Werkstatt bekanntlich vor der Tür per Zufall
Die Fabrik auf Antrag monatelang trotz Wind unter Last ab sofort
Das Blech kreist anderswo vor Nässe vor Sonntag bei Hitze
Freitags das Gerüst am Fenster im Abseits unentwegt aus Zement

Source: constructed counterexample; the first case with "die Kantine" in line 3 replaced by "die Werkstatt", which stands on no flap of that module

eine-zeile-der-falschen-zeile-vorgelegt

de — this text does not satisfy the procedure.

Das Blech kreist anderswo vor Nässe vor Sonntag bei Hitze
Der Asphalt im Regen über Land vermutlich auf Dauer laut Akte
Hinter Glas altert die Kantine bekanntlich vor der Tür per Zufall
Die Fabrik auf Antrag monatelang trotz Wind unter Last ab sofort
Am Ersten schrumpft das Amt mit Bedacht immer laut Ansage
Freitags das Gerüst am Fenster im Abseits unentwegt aus Zement

Source: constructed counterexample; lines 1 and 5 of the first case swapped. Each is a line the board can show, but not in that position — the modules are per line, which is what makes the count a product of thirty-six tens rather than of six.

eine-zeile-zu-wenig

de — this text does not satisfy the procedure.

Am Ersten schrumpft das Amt mit Bedacht immer laut Ansage
Der Asphalt im Regen über Land vermutlich auf Dauer laut Akte
Hinter Glas altert die Kantine bekanntlich vor der Tür per Zufall
Die Fabrik auf Antrag monatelang trotz Wind unter Last ab sofort
Das Blech kreist anderswo vor Nässe vor Sonntag bei Hitze

Source: constructed counterexample; the board has six rows and shows six