10.4. Perl PoetryProgramming Perl mentions the arcane art of Perl Poetrywriting valid Perl programs that, shall we say, have greater literary than pragmatic value.
The trend for writing Perl Poetry began, of course, with Larry and the first Perl haiku: print STDOUT q Just another Perl hacker, unless $spring However, Perl haiku have problemsthey require the reader to agree on certain syllabic conventions. In this case, STDOUT must be read as "standard out" instead of the more usual "studout," and the $ in $spring must be pronounced. To avoid these kinds of confusion, Perl poems have gravitated toward the abstract, generally without a rhyme or syllabic structure. The first example of this, and the most widely known example of Perl poetry, is attributed to Larry: the Black Perl poem that can be found in Programming Perl. As noted there, the undisputed master of Perl poetry is Sharon Hopkins, whose listen, reverse, rush, and shopping poems have received widespread critical acclaim and publication in major periodicals. The practice of Perl poetry has passed its azimuth and is now in decline, save for the occasional Perl poetry contest and entries on the Poetry page of perlmonks.org. This is partially due to lack of interest and partially due to a concerted effort by Larry to ensure that Black Perl does not run on modern versions of Perl. That said, I wish to humbly offer a personal example, inspired by the great masterwork of Proust, À la Récherche du Temps Perdu: for(long => time) {$early && $self->went($bed);} rand time && do { while ($candle--) { (time => $eyes->shut( )) < (time => print "Falling asleep!") } }; |