Algorithmic Avant-Garde
There’s this new, controversial anthology of nearly 4,000 poems, entitled Issue 1. It is large enough to defy the limits of traditional bookbinding, with its 3,785 pages. It defies another assumption about books, too. This anthology was compiled by editors Stephen McLaughlin, Gregory Laynor & Vladimir and Aleksandrovich Zykov, but its contents weren’t exactly “written”. An article in Poetry Magazine’s blog describes exactly how the text was compiled. Suffice it to say that the book was generated, not written.