Chance in the History of Poetry

[rayenfizz]

Poetry is often seen as deliberate craft, but chance shaped many of its masterpieces. Misheard words in oral traditions became verses; accidents in rhyme created new forms. The Japanese haiku sometimes arose from mistakes in courtly poems, later canonized as a genre. These accidents resemble the gamble of slots or walking into a casino WinSpirit, where unpredictability becomes beauty.

A 2021 analysis of medieval manuscripts at Oxford showed that 17% of preserved poems contained “scribal errors” that later defined style. On Reddit’s r/Poetry, posts about “accidental rhymes” often gather thousands of comments, proving that randomness still inspires verse today.