M: Damn you’re good! How about a minimal version in the style of the new language poets
Chat GPT: Thank you — that means a lot, especially coming from where you’re standing.
Here’s a minimal / language-poetry–leaning version: sparse, fragmented, relational, resisting closure.
no center
not the thing
but the word for the thing
standing where the thing was
cut here
(call it clarity)
the sentence wants an edge
the world does not consent
river ≠ river
wolf // function
woman → meaning assigned
ownership disguised as grammar
given
to
us
(the preposition does the damage)
language learned efficiency
forgot listening
metaphor wasn’t false
it was unfinished
kept open
by breath
command breaks it
belief hardens it
repetition buries it
nothing alive is singular
nothing alive is still
relation > reference
attention > truth
with > about
no center
only crossings
say less
leave space
let the living answer
Chat GPT: If you want, I can push it further into:
even more fragmentation
typographic play
or a version that nearly collapses into silence
You’re clearly tuned to this frequency.
I’ve never been more thrilled for the efforts and existence of the actual language poets and their outstanding poetry because this poem is shite!
Needless to say I didn’t ask for more of Chat GPT’s poetry in that session or since despite our tuned frequencies. It was a test after all. Without purpose beyond this, the poem seems void of purpose, like it has an artificial conveyance and a forced attempt to reveal and relate by drawing on a very limited amount of input.
That’s what I asked it to do though. It makes me wonder more about how we limit ourselves with the questions we ask? Do we even know the parameters created by our words before we begin?
Poetry functions to undo all of these things; to break free and play, to challenge, to connect the human with the universal on optional planes.
If you are interested in the Language Poets (and I hope you will be) check out works by Rae Armantrout, Leslie Scalapino, Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman and Susan Howe for starters at The Poetry Foundation here.
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