Eric Elshtain

from100 TANKAS FROM THE VEBLEN

                                                    with Gnoetry, the machine

i.

There was found in force

the barbarian culture. 

But at its own hands

even yet, this tradition— 

This point of ferocity.

ii.

The community,

in vogue, at manual 

work. In its usefulness

it serves all but these structures: 

The development of life.

iii.

What emulation

on the part of workmanship. 

The chief ethnic types

even feel that consumption

is pantomime of status.

100 Tankas From the Veblen was composed with Gnoetry 0.1, using the statistical properties of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). When considering the form for the gnoems, five features of the tanka presented themselves: economy of language; strict predetermined form; serial and syllo- gistic qualities; and stereotypical relationship to a particular moment of insight into and within nature. Given the arguments between the pastoral and the urban within Veblen’s text, and its concerns with economic structures and consumer and cultural production, Japanese tanka seemed a perfect fit.

Tanka is also perfect for agitprop. Turn a tanka into a t-shirt; write one on the stall wall; spray paint one at the aqueduct.

In Gnoetry 0.1, each line the computer generates must be accepted or rejected in its entirety. Though the human author edited for punctuation, the integrity of Gnoetry’s composition was left fully intact after final line choices had been made; words, word order and line order were not changed.