Fun TOY for the playful POET

Soulon friend, Steve D, gave me this really cool cutup machine that I've decided to post here so I always know where to find it when I need it...and also because it's a fun toy that you may want to play with sometimes too.

from Steve:

I got yer Jack Kerouac and I'm gonna raise you a William S. Burroughs.... I don't know if you're familiar with the CUT-UP TECHNIQUE that Burroughs explored with his sometime-collaborator Brion Gysin... but it basically involved cutting up various writings into strips and splicing them together randomly, trusting that some external chaotic force would reorder this word salad into a new and revelatory meaning. HERE, Burroughs describes the technique himself... part of his effort to "exterminate all rational thought."

Somebody created a webtool that's essentially a CUTUP MACHINE (which won't work with all web browsers -- firefox can't handle it,but Explorer can) --

Later, when I was doing research on the dada movement, I found this...from around 1918 or 1924 ...

To Make A Dadist Poem

Tristan Tzara

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though
unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

I hope you have fun playing with this!!!

Nance