Two sonnets, artificial
guest sonnet no. viii
A special guest
This week I’m pleased to be sharing with you two poems written by our new anxiety, the AI, which my snarky and deeply lovable brother-in-law sent to me. It was a joke, and a good one, but I begged to be allowed to post them, because I think they are hilarious and tell us a lot about the craft of poetry.
His prompt was specific, and, again, meant to tease. He’s a librarian with plenty of time on his hands ( there I got mine back ). Here is what he prompted ChatGPT:
Write a shakespearean sonnet about why sonnets should rhyme and be in iambic pentameter, make the poem's turn be about AI has made poets irrelevant.
He’s been on my case for a while that my poems don’t rhyme ( they do, just not in that stuffy way ), but the kicker is how we’re all irrelevant. Please do not respond harshly to this: he’s being a wonderful ass on purpose. As a side note, my bro-in-law also believes you’re not a real poet until you’ve written a sestina, so all you so-called poets out there, get cracking.
ChatGPT returned two sonnets. As Nic noted to me in his email ( subj: “Because I am a donkey” ), “Note that it gave me not one but two sonnets, and the second one basically tells my prompt to eff off.”
My favorite takeaway is how AI took up the argument so many people have been making that artificially generated poetry lacks the necessary “human touch”. It’s a good joke to have that argument so generously given back to us. It makes me think that it’s not just tapping into the zeitgeist, but a manifestation of the zeitgeist. And this post, like all the others, just gives it more food. It can only output an array of all the inputs we’re giving it.
I would love to hear what others think. This is a hot topic, one of the reasons why I wanted to share these pieces. Check out the comments below to add your thoughts.
A note: this has been updated from the original post since I, the elder millennial that I am, had it as ChatGBT instead of ChatGPT. There, that much shows how interested I am in AI. ~ James
The difference ultimately is in the knowledge of ‘who’ wrote the poem, human or AI. The latter is worthless except insofar it is proof that we as a species are capable of subverting ourselves. What should happen, if we are not too stupid and too far gone, is that the individual human creator will not be replaced but be accorded greater value as a rare commodity to be preserved.