Late to the Table
The conversation seems to have moved beyond AI for the moment, but when everyone was talking about it, I tried to craft a poem in the 5-7-5 haiku format that might possibly address some of the questions and worries we have about AI and its impact on our lives and our art.
Will poems not written
without the help of AI
still be found moving?
I have a few longtime friends that I keep in touch with by sending one-sided rambling audio letters to. They tend to go on for 15 minutes or more. In a recent letter I received, a friend suggested I try asking AI to write haiku, just to see what it produced. Later in her letter, she added another idea, one that sounded a little more interesting to me, Why not ask AI to make a list of haiku writing prompts for ideas you can work with and explore?
I haven’t tried doing this yet, but I do like the idea, and I did see something this past Friday night that seems to demonstrate how AI can be used to help (not replace) creators. While drinking cheap high-balls in a smokey yaki-tori restaurant, a friend of mine showed me some recent flyers he had designed for area restaurants. All the pictures he had used were made with Midjourney. The layouts and the design elements were completely original, but the pictures, which my friend typically spends hours searching for, were made in a matter of minutes. With AI, he can now speed up his workflow and quickly access realistic photographs of people doing the things he needs them to do without having to worry about copyright infringement, and without even using a real person’s face.
How this translates to writing, I don’t know, but I do like the idea of quickly generating writing prompts and questions to think about.
(1)
Things you left behind
gather dust and clutter the
corners of my heart.
(2)
This was not written
by brush, pen, chalk, or pencil.
Is it still haiku?
(3)
Why don’t we notice
the first star to disappear
into the dawn’s light?
(4)
The magnolias,
their flowers like bulging fruit,
have yet to open.
(5)
Surrounded by trees
deep in the forest, the sound
of a nearby car.
(6)
If you embrace it,
the form will release you from
your fear to begin.
(7)
The things you can learn
by watching your neighbors
take out the garbage.
As always, thanks for reading.