# Shall I Compare Thee to a Machine-Written Sonnet? An Approach to Algorithmic Sonnet Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.05067 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.05067/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 13 Nov 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [PoetryDiffusion: Towards Joint Semantic and Metrical Manipulation in Poetry Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08456/) (2023)
- [There Once Was a Really Bad Poet, It Was Automated but You Didn't Know It](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03775/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We provide an approach for generating beautiful poetry. Our sonnet-generation algorithm includes several novel elements that improve over the state of the art, leading to metrical, rhyming poetry with many human-like qualities. These novel elements include in-line punctuation, part of speech restrictions, and more appropriate training corpora. Our work is the winner of the 2018 PoetiX Literary Turing Test Award for computer-generated poetry.