Hello all! This past fall I spent a great deal of time working on a project for an English class called Medieval Proof in which I set out to build a text generating recurrent neural network with the goal of generating “literature.” It so happened that as I was doing this ChatGPT exploded in popularity and has begun to raise all sorts of ethical questions. As a physics/math/CS nerd just the challenge alone was motivation enough, but as someone for whom literature is a mainstay of life, this particular problem–that is, can a machine ever write literature–has a special importance because I believe it allows us to investigate the nature of literature. Moreover, it is crucial to explore the implications of the technology that I along with others doing similar work am helping to bring into the world.
i am nothing congealed fire flickering darkness bounded Infinite i am a voiceless voice crying into soundless space i am and i am not sacre-bleu the sky we cannot see the sea we cannot cross my soul i cannot lying there with you under the rubble the ash the water
Your name is Pepper, you are a little tortoise-shell calico cat. Four months ago you left your home in Pacific Grove & ended up miles away over hills & valleys, forests & marshes, streets & highways, in Carmel. You doubtless had to hunt— How did you catch? What did you catch? How did you escape the cougars, the coyotes, the sun, the wind? Where did you sleep at night? Under some pine tree nestled on spongy moss & pine needles? Or in someone’s dumpster, a gully, or a gutter? How much longer would you have been away for if that friendly neighbor hadn’t called & had your microchip scanned? Would you still be out there, one with the wild & with no cares in the world? Did you miss us? We certainly missed you. Yes, we often thought of you, lost somewhere between yesterday & tomorrow. We thought you were dead. Built a little shrine in the backyard. Of course what I really want to know is why. Why? One day you were here & all was normal: you ate your breakfast, watched the cars through the front window, went out for your afternoon saunter between naps on the newspaper. But you missed dinner. & breakfast. & dinner again. It was if the earth had somehow swallowed you up into the soil & the water & the air. But I won’t ask why. I ran away from home, too, once. Pepper, are you the same Pepper? Do you know yourself? Do you know me? Come, come— we’re having salmon with gravy tonight, just for you.
if the light streaked shadows on the wall if the rain fell like shards of glass glimmering shattering if to walk into that deep forest the grass the trees so thick no light can shine if there is no light no sunlight moonlight starlight if to walk & then to drag myself past the limit of my mortal chains if to gaze into that enveloping void if to feel the weight i cannot bear eased if to close my eyes the sea that morning when i could taste the honey of your smile if to be a bird if to catch that moment drifting in time if to hold on a second of eternity longer if to linger in the shadows dripping down the wall the night that gathers like dew in darkness
La Primavera I’ve seen the world end more times than I can count as I sit here watching the dripping sun melt into the bay I wonder what might be said of us many millennia hence & millennia upon millennia upon millennia upon millennia when the sun engulfs the earth in a wave of fire & after when every drop of starlight dries not with a bang but whispering what I wonder will be left of us our art our science our lies & loves our humanity somewhere drifting through space on a golden record a newborn baby crying into the emptiness of light
Tuesday, mid-morning: ersterbend
three minutes
that Cessna was
in the air
Low altitude alert.
Climb immediately.
called the air traffic
controller
[silence]
[the plane] is experiencing
an in-flight emergency.
[silence]
black smoke billowing
the grey day
three minutes to boil
water in my tea kettle :
the hissing climaxes to a
scream that fades to
exhale white vapor like
blood from its silver body
we don’t yet know why
the pilot didn’t respond
crashing into a home on
a ridge & killing her her
passenger & a dog
my brother’s a pilot :
it’s like driving on the
wrong side of the highway
— no experienced person
would ever do such a
thing
an engine failure (that
would need to be two for
the twin engines) or
communication the fog
while he wonders why
it happened i ask myself
silently what they were
thinking what i would think
i think of Juliane Koepcke
the girl who fell two miles
& lived to walk away how
her mother as the lightning
struck LANSA Flight 508
gripped her daughter’s hand
& said :
Now it’s all over
as the plane cracked in half
& fell to the jungle floor
what matters in that moment,
in those final seconds of
consciousness, when you
know you will not walk away ? —
i burned my tongue on my
tea it must steep for three more
minutes three minutes they
didn’t have
i watch my hot breath fading
on a cold window out to
this bleak summer day
my dying bonsai (haven’t
been able to water for drought)
sprouted a green like gold
white lily glowing in the sun
turn away for a moment &
it’s gone — sitting in a pool
of thoughts unthought before
the interminable silence
of this moment
breaks in the noise
of the things i give my
life to,
broken
building
climbing
twisting
towards that light,
the night that covers me —
i couldn’t help but
hear Mahler’s Symphony
No. 9, Movement IV —
all the light & pain,
the twists & turns,
the laughter, the love,
the chords bleeding
into one another ; Mahler’s
final note, ersterbend,
a life, a whisper, the day’s
last breath, the sea, as
crimson fades to black even
Mahler could not hear :
softly
dying
away
CLOSED: bear management in progress
— from a sign on a tree near a bear trap in Ovando, Montana
a night shrouded in
darkness ;
a tent in a town in
wilderness ;
a hungry bear in
his territory ;
who’s to say what
deeds transpired in
silence
what light or voice or
absence suddenly
fulfilled
or late night snack
a crack or a crinkle
probable cause (?)
from silence,
silence
an argument from
silence will hardly
hold in a court
of law
(we cannot know; therefore it was)
why that grizzly,
that woman, that
town, that tent,
that night
& the grizzly
is guilty
unequivocally
irrefutably
undeniably
Lewis and Clark set
in motion your tenuous
fate :
grisley — what’s in a name?
(would that which we call
smell as sweet)
art thou grizzly grizzled grey-
tipped hair
art thou grisly gruesome
ugly monstrous
& George Ord sealed :
Ursus arctos horribilis
your species is horrible
horrible horrible guilty
guilty guilty
it seemed only logical
to kill the thing who killed
the woman
no trial necessary
no Miranda rights
no justice but
death
set the trap & lure
a bear — any one
of the myriad who live
there will do — &
ask the questions test
the DNA
later
a bear i call you by
Robert McClendon
Ricky Jackson
Laurese Glover
Henry McCollum
Leon Brown
(when will it end?
(in california white
settlers killed them
all))
is still a guilty bear
in the eyes of a white cop
proud boy America
We hold these truths to be self-evident
is a bear’s life
worth less than those of those who killed it
in the eyes of
our Creator
& We hold these truths to be self-evident :
dump the 400 pound
carcass of feral sinew
& bone & spirit behind
the dumpster in the
empty lot to forget &
brush it off like
an unfortunate dream
that never happened at
all ;
or carve out its holy
insides & glass its eyes
& stuff it with ragged
newspapers & mount
it on the wall as an effigy
to man’s dominance
over the earth & over
itself to burn into Nature’s
bosom blazing red
the firmament on fire
slowly falling in a night
of quiet darkness :
Oh, the humanity
Oh, the humanity
Oh, the humanity
Hello, again! I thought I would share a poem I wrote recently on the nature of the thing so elusive and oft-reified.
Success?
Memento mori.
I study hard to get a flying A, take
Test after test and class after class:
But what is success?
I earn my degree with sacrifice, work
Shift after shift and job after job:
But what is success?
I rise every morning, check
Like after like and post after post:
But what is success?
I pass people blind to how they suffer
Day to day and life to life:
But what is success?
I sing my song to them, how they smile
Ear to ear and soul to soul:
For what, indeed, is success?
What is success — the thing that
Turns the wheel of progress
Onward — and to what end?
Hello, all! I wanted to express my warmest gratitude to all of you at the initiation of this bright, bold new year! Indeed, it is times like these when poetry can move, shape, and connect people from all over this nation and our globe — to heal our wounds and bind up our souls.
Therefore, I am sharing with you some of the poems I wrote over the course of my winter break; I have many more yet to come, and will post those individually in the coming future. Until then, enjoy!
