[Chapter 8] 8.6 Perl Poetry

8.6 Perl Poetry

The forgery in the attendant sidebar appeared on Usenet on April Fool's Day, 1990. It is presented here without comment, merely to show how disgusting the metaphors of a typical programming language really are. So much for anything resembling literary value. Larry is particularly relieved that "Black Perl", originally written for Perl 3, no longer parses under Perl 5.

Perl Poetry

Article  970  of  comp.lang.perl:
Path:  jpl-devvax!pl-dexxav!lwall
From:  lwall@jpl-dexxav.JPL.NASA.GOV  (Larry  Wall)
Newsgroups:  news.groups,rec.arts.poems,comp.lang.perl
Subject:  CALL  FOR  DISCUSSION:  comp.lang.perl.poems
Message-ID:  <0401@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date:  1  Apr  90  00:00:00  GMT
Reply-To:  lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NSAS.GOV  (Larry  Wall)
Organization:  Jet  Prepulsion  Laboratory,  Pasadena,  CA
Lines:  61
It  has  come  to  my  attention  that  there  is  a  crying  need  for  a  place  for  people  to  express  both  their  emotional
and  technical  natures  simultaneously.  Several  people  have  sent  me  some  items  which  don't  fit  into  any
newsgroup.  Perhaps  it's  because  I  recently  posted  to  both  comp.lang.perl  and  to  rec.arts.poems,  but  people
seem  to  be  writing  poems  in  Perl,  and  they're  asking  me  where  they  should  post  them.  Here  is  a  sampling:
From  a  graduate  student  (in  finals  week),  the  following  haiku:
study, write, study,
do review (each word) if time.
close book. sleep? what's that?
And someone writing from Fort Lauderdale writes:
sleep, close together,
sort of sin each spring & wait;
50% die
A person who wishes to remain anonymous wrote the following example of "Black Perl". (The Pearl poet
would have been shocked, no doubt.)
BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit;  wait until time.
    open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);
write it, print the hex while each watches,
    reverse its length, write again;
    kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
       unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");
    kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
    values aside, each one;
        die sheep! die to reverse the system
        you accept (reject, respect);
next step,
    kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
    wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
    do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
    exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
    select (quickly) & warn your next victim;
AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
    wait, wait until time;
    wait until next year, next decade;
        sleep, sleep, die yourself,
        die at last
I  tried  that,  and  it  actually  parses  in  Perl.    It  doesn't  appear  to  do  anything  useful,  however.    I  think  I'm  glad,
actually...  I  hereby  propose  the  creation  of  comp.lang.perl.poems  as  a  place  for  such  items,  so  we  don't  clutter
the  perl  or  poems  newsgroups  with  things  that  may  be  of  interest  to  neither.    Or,  alternately,  we  should
create  rec.arts.poems.perl  for  items  such  as  those  above  which  merely  parse,  and  don't  do  anything  useful.
(There  is  precedent  in  rec.arts.poems,  after  all.)    Then  also  create  comp.lang.perl.poems  for  poems  that
actually  do  something,  such  as  this  haiku  of  my  own:
print STDOUT q
Just another Perl hacker,
unless $spring
Larry Wall lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov

Larry's, er, corpus has fortunately been overshadowed by that of the reigning Perl Poet, Sharon Hopkins. She has written quite a few Perl poems, as well as a paper on Perl poetry that she presented at the Usenix Winter 1992 Technical Conference, entitled "Camels and Needles: Computer Poetry Meets the Perl Programming Language". (The paper is available as misc/poetry.ps on CPAN.) Besides being the most prolific Perl poet, Sharon is also the most widely published, having had the following poem published in both the Economist and the Guardian:

#!/usr/bin/perl
APPEAL:
listen (please, please);
    open yourself, wide;
    join (you, me),
    connect (us,together),
tell me.
do something if distressed;
    @dawn, dance;
    @evening, sing;
    read (books,$poems,stories) until peaceful;
    study if able;
    write me if-you-please;
sort your feelings, reset goals, seek (friends, family, anyone);
        do*not*die (like this)
        if sin abounds;
keys (hidden), open (locks, doors), tell secrets;
    do not, I-beg-you, close them, yet.
                accept (yourself, changes),
                bind (grief, despair);
    require truth, goodness if-you-will, each moment;
select (always), length(of-days)
# listen (a perl poem)
# Sharon Hopkins
# rev. June 19, 1995