"Do the New Poets Think? It's Possible": Computer Poetry and Cyborg Subjectivity

This article examines the origins of computer-generated poetry, both as a thought experiment and as an aesthetic practice, with a focus on the works of the Stuttgart-based poet, theorist, philosopher, publisher, and professor Max Bense. My readings emphasize the ways in which computer-generated poems challenge fundamental assumptions about the relationship between language, technology, and subjectivity. In these works, the human subject emerges through a stochastic process of automated text generation, representing a form of cyborg subjectivity; Bense constructs the text itself as an interface of human and machine, an intersection of multiple modes of textual production.