Poetry via 'fortune'

While on BITNET, for many years, I got a daily poem from the BIALIK@BRANDEIS poetry server. (Kudos to Chris Hurlburt who wrote the VMS script to automate it) I've collected these, along with others, into a single text file and turned it into a fortune file.

Meaning you can have a random poem any time your heart desires it. Cool, eh?

There are (initially) 158 poems in the file, though there is almost certainly some duplication.

Get A Poem Now!

Due to a neat PHP module off of Freshmeat, you can get a random poem now!

Or as many as your heart desires. Enjoy.

How-to

  • Download the text file and the lookup file and put them with your other fortune files; this is usually /usr/share/games/fortune
  • Run 'fortune poems' and voila!

    • Note that you can just run fortune with no arguments, and it will randomly (ie sometimes) choose a poem, since they are now in its target directory.

    Navigation Links

  • Back to code page
  • Back to home page