[lbo-talk] spam poetry

[Mike Beggs]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 1:04 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> I have a hard time with such text because I misread individual letters, and
> when context does not necessarily reveal the misreading, I'm in the soup!
> But nevertheless, I too see a certain charm in this verse. The hoaxers, as I
> understand your account, had to make choices, however 'random,' of what
> phrase to place next. I would imagine that the debates have been highly
> entertaining over these texts.

Yeah, in the case of that particular poem I have trouble believing it
wasn't composed - it's only the first and last lines that seem out of
place, and the last line is the best. Reading it again, most of it
actually seems to reprise the Australian cliche of European heritage
vs an alien continent. 'The Black Swan of Trespass' is a cool phrase
though, and has been used for book and play titles, eg marxist
historian Humphrey McQueen's history of Australian modernist painting.

Mike