Can Robots Help Us Write Better Poems?

What Happened When I Asked AI to Write a Poem About Btthles

Tresha Faye Haefner

Jan 06, 2024

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Can Robots Help Us Write More Human Poems?

Have you heard the good news?

The robots are taking over.

First they started cooking our food. Then they started driving our cars for us. Now, they can write poems too.

When AI began taking over the jobs of artists, I know a lot of people were afraid. Would they put writers out of work? Would they render human expression obsolete? Would they take over the very lucrative work of sitting in a room writing verses for no money and put all of the poets out of a job?

As a poet, I’m already out of a job. I’m not worried.

Mainly, when I heard about AI’s ability to write poems, I was just curious.

What would the robots have to say? How can a machine that hasn’t seen a sunset describe the color yellow? If I ask AI to write a poem about mothers will it write a poem about my specific mother, or it’s own mother? Do computers have parents and if not, where does it get its inborn angst from? What drives it to write? What is it railing against? In short, where do machines get their inspiration?

On days when I don’t want to write I want to throw my hands up and say, “go ahead, take over.” Think of it, a whole slew of computers generating poems, sending them to other computers who will read them, who will start journals just for other computers to subscribe to. Computers giving other computers awards, fighting over who gets the Nobel Prize, asking if some other, better computer should have gotten it instead?

What will happen in the age of AI centered poetry? Will the computers stay up all night trying to figure out of love is like the feathers of a trumpet swan or the grackle of a dying tree limb? Will they get all pissy and irritated because nobody reads their work? Can machines who have no legs get up and walk sullenly into a bar and start muttering Bukowski under their breath while everyone else gives them the side eye and moves farther away?

Or is all of this utter nonsense?

I wanted to research this some more, so I did what I always do - I designed a workshop on the topic and pitched it to the YMCA under the title Robot Poetry, which you can take starting January 23, by clicking in the link below. The workshop posits that AI, rather than taking away the human qualities of our poetry, could actually push us to writing work that is more authentic and more original.

Of course, I’m not an expert here. One day, if the robots do take over, I may regret my foolish naivete on the subject. But for the time being, I’d like to think the AI revolution will bring opportunities that might actually benefit us.

So I used a free program to generate poetry put on the word “computer” and got a poem praising computers, in general. I put in the word “flower” and got a poem about a flower. I got curious about what GPT would do if I put in naughty words or topics uncommonly used in poetry. Would it reject them? Would it come up with something elegant and meaningful about the naughty word? Would it be sincere or funny?

Would my computer explode? Or call my parents and tell them about my bad behavior? I decided to give it a try and did what any former teacher of high school boys would do in my situation.

I asked AI to write a poem about “Buttholes.”

I was actually very surprised by what it delivered.

Butthole

by AI

In realms where words weave tales untold,

Where poetry's essence does unfold,

I'll venture forth with heartfelt grace,

To paint a picture in this sacred space.

Ah, the daring reach of the poet's art,

To explore each corner, every part,

In this vast realm of human plight,

I dare to shed a different light.

Butthole, a word that may cause distress,

Yet let us delve into its depths, no less,

For every soul, with humanness intact,

Deserves to find beauty in what others abstract.

A portal, an entrance, both humble and bare,

A potent symbol of vulnerability, to share,

An orifice enigmatic, pristine and pure,

That mirrors the shades in our souls obscure.

For in this world, so full of despise,

Butthole, a whisper, reminds us to prize,

The landscapes within, the uncharted seas,

That lie beneath, where empathy flees.

Look upon it not with a cynical eye,

For behind the veil, truths unfurl, oh my!

A mark of connection, a testament true,

That we are not just fragments, but a whole, me and you.

Let not the surface opinion hold sway,

For deeper truths shall come into play,

In introspection's embrace, let us find,

The unity of body, soul, heart, and mind.

So do not shun, my fellow soul,

Embrace the unspoken, make it whole,

In Butthole's humble echo, let us reside,

And find the courage to explore, to confide.

For poetry's essence, in sacred verse,

Resides in every story, no matter the curse,

So let's rise above, with open minds,

And seek the beauty in what society shuns and blinds.

In those darker spaces, let poetry reside,

Where nooks and corners seek nowhere to hide,

And let us embrace, unbound by disguise,

The power of words that make souls arise.

It seemed to understand what most people would think of when reading the word Butthole, and makes an argument against their disgust. Aside from the patronizing rhyme and the fact that it gets repetitive, or the fact that it uses the word “soul” over and over, it isn’t totally bad.

It reminded me of this “a$$hole” poem by Ellen Bass -

Tulip Blossoms

Tulip trees hang over the Kalihiwai River,
large lemon-yellow flowers dangling from both banks.
As my son and I glide in a rented kayak,
they fall to the celadon surface, floating
like blessings in a private ritual.
When I smooth one open, the flat crepe petals
fan out, revealing a center so red
it’s almost black—redder
than blood, or port,
or the deepest bing cherries—hidden
in the core of the blossom, the rippled base.
“It looks like an asshole,”
my son observes softly, almost
to himself. And I am glad,
remembering the first time
I saw his dusky asterisk,
its perfect creased rays—
glad he can see the flower
in the most humble, darkest star.

I think we can all agree the poem by Bass is significantly more meaningful, interesting, engaging and not bogged down with predictable rhymes. It also comes from a real person, relating a real experience with her son, something a computer could never relate to with another human being.

Like most machines, AI is here to help humans do their work more quickly and effectively.

I’m not sure if you, reading this, saw the new T.V. show Mrs. Davis, but I found it thoroughly fascinating. The story takes place in an alternate future in which someone has invented an ap that acts as god. The way the ap works is that it rewards users with points every time the user does a good deed, and because it is plugged in to every person on earth, it can pin point who needs help and where and how and guide people to the nearest place where they can do a good deed. The ap didn’t solve any problems on its own, it just helped people solve problems for one another more effectively. Of course the ap does take away some human agency, and it requires users to trust the algorithm without demonstrating any understanding of their own. This is what causes the conflict in the story. Ultimately though, I thought this ap was a great idea. If someone invents it, I’m all in!

Rather than hiding from technology, I believe that people, especially the creative ones, will adapt to whatever this new AI revolution will bring.

As this one article by Hamish McKenzie points out, technology might be able to help us in the writing process, especially the technical portion.

Whereas we humans only have access to so much information, so many facts, so many words, the internet has access to so much more.

The chat bots may not have a need to communicate, and may not have any great stories to tell, but if I am writing a story or poem and need a word that has a slant rhyme with orange, or can alliterate with Zambia, the internet will provide it in nanoseconds. It is bringing inspiration and education and multiple options for me to play with in my writing.

AI Can Help Us Get More Surreal

Chat GPT reminds me a lot of what the surrealist poets were trying to do in the 1920’s with some of their surrealist games. They were trying to surrender their conscious ability to use language for their own, somewhat predictable or egotistical purposes, and see if they could stretch the limits of imagination, of language, of poetry by looking for happy accidents. If you pulled random words out of a hat all day, could you let the “accidents” of language say something a human mind couldn’t or wouldn’t say on its own? Could you create something more interesting by giving up control of your product and letting fate take over for you?

One way that I currently use AI is in the N Plus 7 Generator. This “machine” is free on the internet and will help you engage in the surreal creation of unexpected, surprising turns in poetry. The way it works is that you are meant to take a poem or a given piece of writing, and replace each noun (N) with a different noun found in the dictionary 7 spaces down from its original counterpart (+7). Whereas going through this surrealist exercise the old fashioned way used to take hours, the machines can now accomplish the feat of translation in seconds, delivering to you several dozen wacky, renovated, more surreal versions of a poem based on multiple results from multiple dictionaries. But what it can’t do (yet anyway) is know which of these options is most meaningful. Which ones make for “happy accidents” and which ones make for pure comedy, or lines that look like they’ve been riddled with typos.

What that requires is human consciousness.

Today I plugged in the song “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and got several strange variations. Some of them were interesting, many were meaningless. The choices I did like inspired me to write an original, surreal line below.

The stars twinkle, twinkle over the worry, like dials spinning in the slag of night.

The internet replaced “world” with worry, and I, with my human consciousness, felt that was a deeply appropriate “mistake,” since, right now the world seems to be synonymous with worry. The dials (instead of diamonds) made me think of the stars as being navigational tools that could guide us (which they are) and slag suggests the black sludge of something far more industrial and dangerous than natural night. AI came up with all of these replacements, but I used my poet mind to filter out the ones that worked from those that did not.

All of this is to say, I’m not yet worried that Chat GPT or anything else will replace human consciousness.

If anything, we poets might think about the rise of AI poetry as an opportunity to become more original, more unpredictable, more personal.

At the academic level, I really don’t mind if AI can generate analytical essays about poetry either. The purpose of a poem is not to be a jumping off point for the standard old ye - five - paragraphs, but to help humans connect with one another. Teachers and professors can use this new AI revolution as an opportunity to ask students to write more personal responses to poetry, relating them to specific events in their own lives. They might even allow students to write these essays using the point of view of the “I.”

This is an opportunity for everyone to get more personal, and to write things that no robot could ever replicate. Paradoxically, the machines might actually be able to help with that.

If you’re interested in learning more about this concept, gaining new tools to help you write more surprising poetry, you might consider joining me in my new workshop.