"Takei, George" by Mark Sample
This generative poem uses Nick Montfort’s Taroko Gorge engine to produce a poem about Japanese American Hollywood actor, public figure, and gay-rights activist George Takei. Sample selects words for the generator that represent three aspects of Takei’s life: his time in a Japanese internment camp as a child, his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek, and his work as a gay-rights activist. The poem generated from these three very different frames of reference creates humorous combinations of disparate elements that lead us to reflect upon the differences between the utopian Star Trek universe and the United States in which George Takei battles against homophobic and xenophobic attitudes. This poem shows how past and present, fiction and reality, gay and straight, Japanese and American, pop culture and politics all resonate in the cultural icon known as George Takei.
