12-tone poetry

arnold schoenberg invented 12-tone musical composition over 100 years ago.  i became intrigued about applying some of those ideas to poetry when i realized a poem i wrote using multiple cutups used what i thought of as "word rows", a reflection of the "tone rows" used in 12-tone composition.

i won't bore you with the details, but i spent over a month developing the software i use to help me compose "12-tone" poetry.  suffice it to say that while language doesn't incorporate scales, chromatic or otherwise, so there's no correspondence to 12 tones, i use parts of speech, alphabetization, and lots of random sampling to generate the 104 word rows that make up the
"12-tone matrix" that forms the collection of raw material i use to cutup, revise and edit each
"12-tone" poem.  here are a couple of early examples:
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horrible vain and logical



horrible vain and logical
grandmother issues fantastic
misery in secret
temple she wants her
quiet fighting magnets
to join the healing
military testing
necessary rice provided that
meaningful miserable grandmother

goes everywhere uptown
injecting young technology
boy oh boy
with super substance plus
​
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vehement cheers



vehement cheers vault quartz
bravo helen!
hot dulcimer wisecrack,
whoop-de-doo
quantum redesign hook.

join the vortex mission,
yoga incandescence,
cluster vast northward query
after bitter parametric accident.

elixir jazz leads
youngest carotene group
so vaguely marvelous tendril
kills everyone alongside pressroom