Template-Free Construction of Poems with Thematic Cohesion and Enjambment

Existing poetry generation systems usually focus on particular features of poetry (such as rhythm, rhyme, metaphor) and specific techniques to achieve them. They often resort to template-base solutions, in which it is not always clear how many of the alleged features of the outputs were already present in the template employed. The present paper considers two specific features – thematic consistency, and enjambment – and presents an ngram based construction method that achieves these features without the use of templates. The construction procedure is not intended to produce poetry of high quality, only to achieve the features considered specifically in its design. A set of metrics is defined to capture these features in quantitative terms, and the metrics are applied to system outputs and to samples of both human and computer generated poetry. The results of these tests are discussed in terms of the danger of to ignoring certain features when designing construction procedures but valuing them during evaluation even if they arise from hard-wiring in the resources or serendipitous emergence, and the fundamental need for poets to develop a personal voice – fundamental for human poets and inconsistent with the application of Turing tests.