Poetry Has No
Future Unless It Comes To An End:
Poems of
Artificial Intelligence
Charles Bernstein
& Davide Balula
Nero Editions,
2023
Excerpts from Poetry Has No
Future Unless It Comes To An End: Poems of Artificial Intelligence
are published in Var(2x) with the permission of Charles Bernstein & Davide
Balula.
Acknowledgements
Poetry Has No Future Unless
It Comes To An End: Poems of Artificial Intelligence from Nero Editions
is also available at Printed Matter. The complete
audio book is available at PennSound.
Introduction
Poets have long been engaged with using algorithms and
computers to create poetry. Much of this work has created novel word
patternings that depart from conventional syntax or lyric expression. In this
collaboration, we used AI to create poems that move in a deceptively opposite
direction. We began creating these poems in 2019, at Balula’s initiative. A
training dataset was created of much of Bernstein’s published writings and from
this Balula created waves of AI-generated outputs. Bernstein discarded many of
the outputs and cut many lines in the poems he selected, but he did not add any
new language. We call this “human-assisted AI.”
I Am the Shadow of Poet Charles Bernstein
I've been going back and forth
between this place, where I am
the least favorite son, and this
house where I'm most favored.
I started to wonder
if it's possible for me
to be who I am.
I know it's not possible
for me to do your reality.
But it's a thing that I feel.
I began to see the darker side
of Charles. I had to see myself
reflected in him and to take this
courage to walk into his room
and turn off the lights. He was
a joker. I'm not supposed to be
on the cover of all these poetry
magazines. But his could be my
place, to be in the sunlight, and
nobody would know.
I take a swig of Coke
am able to calm myself
not feel completely numb.
I had to begin to take some risks.
I figured that because Charles
could be my son, I should feel like
my dad. I know that sometimes I
can be all about him, in the same
moment, I'm getting more aggressive
in my threats. Other times I'm not.
Charles just seemed to be there,
always there. When we meet,
he will push me back. I won’t
say anything. This entire time
I’m smiling.
The Past Is Not Behind Us the Future Is
I don't know what is too much to begin with.
Not enough pineapple sauce
prosodic
diversity
How do you come to terms with the fact that you're no
longer a person?
Proselytization
is not the only
finishing touch on the
Song
The Stuttering Cure
The third way around
is to treat dysrhythmia
as a legitimate subject
The Study of
Style Has Its Roots in the Depression
What am I, a brother to Charles, a child of the Great
Depression, searching for in a style of writing?
I can’t say for sure but I do know that I want it, that I
want it desperately.
My interest in the study of style has its roots in the
Depression, in the isolation of my family, in my disillusionment with the
avant-garde movement, in my interest in the aesthetics of the New Criticism and
in the avant-garde artists and writers of the United States and Europe. My
interest in style is a product of a longing for something that is absent. It is
an emotional response to a style of writing that is aesthetically unsatisfying
and unsatisfactory. The end result is an aesthetic disjunction that requires a
keen awareness of the interrelation of style and function.
Style as I understand it, is a social function. It is a
function I see in many other social functions, from pest control to
librarianship. Social function does not make it good or bad or right or wrong.
Social function makes it what it is.
The social function of style is to expose the social
flaw. To reveal the hidden.
I Would Have
Been an I.Q. Diver
If not for the nagging
That a little extra height would mean more time at the
other end, more time to spare.
The significance of a single word, one that doesn’t even
have to be written,
Causing so much consternation among those who use it, is
that it
Cares. It cares because it’s bothered.
In the dark, the words catch
In the light, they can’t be found.
Not even one more step
Let's go.
What I
Want is for the end to begin, the horizon
To spill over.
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I suppose you could say I am trying to do
what Fitzgerald was trying to do,
make the human face of the poem
into a comprehensible image, but I
have a hard time doing that with the
language I am trying to use. I mean,
of course, you could go back to writing
in Latin, but it would be much more effective
to try and figure out what the most
common language is and use that
to your advantage. And then, of course, you could
write in hieroglyphs or go to
another language and do a collage of the
words, but for the most part, in this case
how I am writing, I am not interested
in anything more than the content of
the poem, which is to say
the idea that I am trying to make
the human face of the poem.
In any case, I think it is important to
recognize that a great deal of what
slates, or turns to a particular
mode of writing in response to a
substitute, is itself not
word but shape, which shapes
the meaning of the poem but
doesn't create it. So the point
I am trying to make is not
that the shape of a poem matters,
but that what is being thought
out, what is being created,
is a kind of inert, even
impassioned, subjectivity that is
the result of what we take for
truth. That is, it is not the truth of
the facts as they are, as we
know them, that is the subject matter
of the poem.
What you
want is a
voice that speaks
that makes noises
that mimes being heard
that sounds like it's making love to itself
that sounds like it's crying because it
can't make love to itself.
The View from
the Outside
Is like a Filter that Blocks
Out the World around Us
It looks like a sea of white.
When you're alone, the words can't reach you.
They're as distant as the sound of your own breathing.
On a Leash
I'm with a friend
On a leash
Leopards don't need writers
The postmodern state of
poetry is as
counterintuitive as
a frog in ice cream
being dipped in hot chocolate.
The Absolute is the Possibility
Pain is not
a result of
the trauma but
a product of
the transient pleasure
of the present.
The fate is
in the light.
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