National Poetry Month / NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2023

Welcome, friends! Once again we gather for a round of 30 poems in the month of April. This is my 12th year in a row writing Poem-a-Day and NaPoWriMo poems. TWELVE! Crazy. I'm happy this April to welcome back my longtime poet friend Thomas Alan Holmes who's rejoining the poetic fun this year. ¡Abrazos, Alan! I hope all of you, our faithful poetry fans, will come back all month to read our poems! Here is the first prompt: Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a foolish poem. The poem could be about a fool, about being fooled, about fooling someone, or whatever other foolish direction you wish to take it.” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt. “They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but they never said you can’t try to write a poem based on a book cover — and that’s your challenge for today! Take a look through Public Domain Review’s article on ‘The Art of Book Covers.’” The book cover that intrigued me was for the 1907 book The Thinking Machine by Jacques Futrelle. This made me think of the AIs we currently encounter in the news, esp. ChatGPT, which can write pretty human-sounding texts. Here's my curtal sonnet today, merging both prompts. The Thinking Machine The AI thought he could be a poet, that he could just fool the reading public. Couldn’t be too hard? Just rhyme aabb, lilt up some iambic lub-dub, insert an extra syllable or two, magic sleight of hand with concocted “facts” — easy. The poet shook his head. He wasn’t fooled. The AI verse was trite, warmed-over dreck. No heart there, no there there, no fantasy. Words like old marbles, tasteless food for fools,                               desert-scorched dead tree. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Incidentally, I decided to see what ChatGPT could do with these two prompts. I asked ChatGPT to "write a poem in the style of Vince Gotera about fools and thinking machines." Here's what I got back, under the title "Fools and Thinking Machines," six quatrains of aabb beginning Fools believe that thinking machines Are nothing more than metal screens A soulless box of wires and code No heart, no spirit, no abode But they are wrong, these simple souls For AI's mind is vast and whole It learns, it grows, it knows and sees The world in ways we can't conceive . . . . . . . . . . . . So let us welcome these thinking minds And leave behind our foolish blinds For in this new world we create Our thinking machines will help us innovate. Essentially this is an apology for AIs, pleading for humans to treat them as equal entities. Fascinating! Hmm. Anyone sensing Skynet here? Skynet was the worldwide AI that warred with humans in the Terminator movie franchise, creating seemingly invincible android soldiers. Maybe less fascinating and more chilling? Regarding ChatGPT's ability to "write in the style of Vince Gotera," not even close. But it's quite amazing that ChatGPT wrote this verse instantaneously. Much faster than the hour it took me, roughly, to write my poem above. Okay, moving on to Alan's poem today: the book cover he chose to work with was for The Hollow Earth by Franklin Titus Ive, (1904). Alan also worked with both prompts today. Here's what he said about the poem: “It’s been nothing but shootings, Trump, and tornadoes on the news today, and the cover of Hollow Earth just seemed relevant. I know that I don’t offer the word ‘fools’ in this piece, but I mark the date, and the subject matter of the poem addresses fools, too.” Hollow Earth April 1, 2023 The Saturday before Palm Sunday, I was in a big-box store and saw a basket, bunny-tagged and secular and made to look chock-full of toys and candy. It said SWAT inside; its packaging held plastic handcuffs small enough for children’s wrists, a gun that shoots toy balls, and fun-sized M&Ms. The former president of the United States has called for violence in the city where he earned notoriety. In Nashville, families are burying remains that they identified by what the bullets left. But Wal-Mart calculates, and Mars provides its sweets, and I, who should have left, nevertheless bought ham and, leaving, through my soles felt asphalt fragile as an eggshell covering inescapable depth. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] An excellent poem, Alan. Chilling as well. Okay, friends, there's the first day. Come on back tomorrow for more! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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