Ideas Imagine Passion: A Computer-Written Prose Poem

Notes

A computer-written prose poem, generated by a program written by David Benedetti using a 2,300-word vocabulary collaboratively supplied by over eighty writers. First edition, published by the Peoples Internationalist Publishing Conspiracy, San Francisco, 1983; 63 pp. The copyright page carries the best joke in the computer-poetry shelf: "No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, of which there is none, or from David Benedetti." It goes on: "This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters and events portrayed in this prose poem to any real events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental — and a happy coincidence — since the computer and its program writes without intention, conscious or unconscious, and knows absolutely nothing about the people whose names may appear within this work." Scanned by Bre Pettis in August 2026 from a copy obtained on interlibrary loan from the University of New Mexico Library (call number PS3552.E5396 I3 1983), after the book sat on the collection's want list — it is held by only a handful of libraries and effectively never appears on the market.