Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 316.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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[1] From: James Rovira <jamesrovira@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.313: AI, poetry and readers (58)
[2] From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.313: AI, poetry and readers (54)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2025-01-13 01:28:05+00:00
From: James Rovira <jamesrovira@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.313: AI, poetry and readers
Tim -
Thanks for your response, again. I think you're asking good questions about
what makes for a useful model. So the same thing can be a model for some
purposes and isn't a model for other purposes.
My one point of disagreement is with what you said about nonsense
sentences. I think the reaction you describe is for a sentence that isn't
nonsense. It's only partly nonsense, or mostly nonsense, like Westley was
"mostly dead" in the *Princess Bride*. Lewis Carroll loves these, but we
still kind of make sense of them. You can't have any reaction to a truly
nonsense sentence because it literally makes no sense. Here's the most
famous one:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
None of these words go together in any coherent way, so it's a nonsense
sentence. There's no emotional reaction possible.
From here, though, I agree with a lot that you said. I would agree with the
idea a human mind needs to be present at the reception end, at least, to
make "meaning." I have always agreed with you that computers aren't
thinking, and the text they generate doesn't have meaning *to them*. My
argument is that they can still have meaning *for us as readers *because
meaning and intentionality is embedded in language itself whether the text
generator possesses it or not. On a very brute force, material level, words
on a screen are still and always words wherever they come from.
If I were to think through our examples of sonnets as models, however, from
the standpoint of a creative writing instructor (I've taught grad and
undergrad creative writing courses and supervised creative theses, mostly
in poetry), I could take any of the computer generated sonnets posted here
and use them as a model for a sonnet because they meet requirements:
fourteen lines, one of the two most common rhyme schemes (for Elizabethan
sonnets in the case of those posted here), iambic pentameter, and meeting
all of those requirements in sensible grammatical units. If you read them
out loud, they would sound like generally readable and grammatically
correct sentences. They are technically proficient, in other words.
So if I wanted to show students what a technically proficient sonnet would
look like, I would indeed use those AI generated sonnets. They serve as
models for technically proficient sonnets.
HOWEVER, if I wanted to show students something more advanced, subtle, and
complex, I'd need Shakespearean sonnets, or Petrarchan sonnets, say by
Petrarch or Wyatt. Those rely more on polysemy and irony to create
subtleties of meaning that the AI generated sonnets lack. Generally, with
AI, we never ask, "Did he mean to say this or that?" Or even Billy
Collins's sonnet that responds to the entire sonnet tradition from the
point of view of a woman's voice who wishes the poet would quit writing and
just get her to bed already. AI doesn't think in terms of knowledgeable
readers who get the joke. My experience has been AI is more likely to
explain the joke than tell it.
Anyway, thank you for this discussion. Whether we agree or not, and I think
we agree on quite a bit, you've helped me think through my own ideas.
Jim R
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2025-01-12 10:21:54+00:00
From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.313: AI, poetry and readers
[snip]
> A question for Bill below.
>
>>> Bill -- a poem made up of another poet's lines from the other poet's poetry
>>> is called a "cento." I believe that AI could generate centos. But in that
>>> case, the lines come from another source, so any "intention" would be from
>>> the human source of the original poetry, not the AI that assembled the
>>> lines. Computers don't have intention. Even if it were thematically based
>>> on another poet's poems, I would say the same thing.
>>>
>>> Jim R
>>
>> You misunderstood the procedure. I, me, a human being, I choose paragraphs
> from
>> a text, and gave them to FTH, and FTH, in turn derived a poem from them. The
>> intentionality that put those things together is mine, not FTH’s. BTW, FTH
>> didn’t quote anything. Perhaps we could say that it transformed the text it
> was
>> given, though ’transform’ seems rather a weak idea for what happened. Anyhow,
>> once it did what it did, I told it to make some changes. The intention that
>> called for those changes, that was my intention, not FTH’s. The actual
> procedure
>> is more complex than you’re implying and I don’t see how my intentionality
can
>> be completely discounted, as you are
>> doing.
>>
>> Bill Benzon
>
> I said the intention was in the words themselves,
You did? I don’t see where. Anyhow, in what way could intention be in “the words
themselves” What do you mean by that phrase? The symbols on the page, or the
sounds in the air? How could there be any intention there, they’re merely
physical phenomena? Of do you mean in the meaning, the Saussurian signified? But
that’s a thing in someone’s mind, one version for the speaker/writer, other
versions for readers or listeners.
> so I'm not completely
> discounting intention. You said just now the intention is in your own use of
the
> tech. I agree with that as well.
>
> I only said the intention was not in the computer itself, which you didn't
> address. What intention am I completely discounting?
Mine, the “director” of this procedure. In the case of that particular poem
there is no "human source of the original poetry.” There are various human
sources (me, Miriam Yevick, Frederick Turner) and some intervening technology,
including the book in which I found Yevick’s words.
> Jim R
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