Poetic Experiments with ChatGPT

using a quote from a letter by George Eliot

portrait of George Eliot

A little more exploration of ChatGPT for the week.

I wanted to try out ChatGPT for making poetry in different forms and see what it came up with…

I was reading an article on Jillian Hess’s NOTED today and took a quote from a letter by George Eliot in Hess’s article…

“I have lately led so unsettled a life, and have been so desultory in my employments, that my mind, never of the most highly organized genus, is more than usually chaotic, or, rather, it is like a stratum of conglomerated fragments, that shows here a jaw and rib of some ponderous quadruped, there a delicate alto-relievo of some fern-like plant, tiny shells and mysterious nondescripts incrusted and united with some unvaried and uninteresting but useful stone. My mind presents just such an assemblage of disjointed specimens of history, ancient and modern; scraps of poetry picked up from Shakespeare, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Milton; newspaper topics; morsels of Addison and Bacon, Latin verbs, geometry, entomology, and chemistry; reviews and metaphysics—all arrested and petrified and smothered by the fast-thickening every-day accession of actual events, relative anxieties, and household cares and vexations.”
September, 14, 1839, The George Eliot Letters.

and used it in ChatGPT asking for a poem using Terza Rima rhyming form

(Rules of the Terza Rima Form

The end-word of the second line in one tercet supplies the rhyme for the first and third lines in the following tercet. Thus, the rhyme scheme (aba, bcb, cdc, ded) continues through to the final stanza or line.

Terza rima is typically written in an iambic line and, in English, most often in iambic pentameter. If another line length is chosen, such as tetrameter, the lines should be of the same length. There are no limits to the number of lines a poem composed in terza rima may have.)

I’ve led a life unsettled, wild, and strange,
My thoughts in chaos, scattered all around,
A mind in fragments, drifting out of range.

A jawbone here, where giant beasts abound,
A fern-like plant, its pattern faintly shown,
All mixed with stones, both useful and profound.

Scraps of the past and present I have grown,
From ancient history, to poets' grace,
To modern cares that heavy weight have sown.

Shakespeare, Cowper, Wordsworth’s fleeting trace,
Entomology and chemistry in part,
Yet daily life begins to crowd the space.

My mind’s a graveyard of a thousand starts,
A fossil bed of dreams and broken hearts.

Now I will try the same thing with the same material as a Villanelle poetic form

(Rules of the Villanelle Form

The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.)

My life unsettled, thoughts in disarray,
A stratum built of fragments, torn apart,
Where chaos reigns and order fades away.

The jawbone of a beast begins to sway,
Beside a fern-like imprint, faint as art,
My life unsettled, thoughts in disarray.

The tiny shells and stones of dull display,
Encrusted mysteries, whole worlds depart,
Where chaos reigns and order fades away.

From history to poets' songs I stray,
Shakespeare and Bacon etched within my heart,
My life unsettled, thoughts in disarray.

Through Latin verbs and theories of the day,
Geometry and dreams that never start,
Where chaos reigns and order fades away.

The household cares and daily burdens weigh,
Each fragment locked, yet falling still apart,
My life unsettled, thoughts in disarray,
Where chaos reigns and order fades away.

Here’s a Sestina inspired by the same original text:

(Rules of the Sestina Form

The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE

The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme.)

I lead a life unsettled, thoughts askew,
Among the fragments scattered in my mind,
A stratum deep with fossils I review,
Of ancient pieces, history combined,
Where jaw and fern and mystery entwine,
And stones of life grow heavy, undefined.

The fossils speak, yet still they stay confined,
Encrusted memories forever skew,
Where shells and nondescripts together twine,
A broken, distant language for the mind.
Poetry and prose, they are combined,
A layered mass of fragments to review.

Shakespeare and Milton join the daily view,
Their ancient words with Addison combined,
While Bacon’s thoughts and Cowper’s lines incline,
To make my scattered mind further skew.
These relics form the backdrop of the mind,
As modern worries start to intertwine.

The mundane cares of life and time entwine,
With ancient history that I review,
And all these tasks are filling up the mind,
Till life itself feels heavy, so confined.
Anxieties arrive, and plans go skew,
A fossil bed of thoughts that never twine.

Entomology and verse still intertwine,
Latin and news together crowd the view,
And all of life seems like a constant skew,
Where every-day’s events must I review.
The fossils of my past are yet confined,
But press their weight within a cluttered mind.

I carry all these fragments in my mind,
A mix of useful, strange, and undefined.
They fossilize in layers, once combined,
Old history with life will intertwine,
And every care, I study and review,
While living in a state so far askew.

Each fossil fragment intertwines, confined,
An endless skew I struggle to review,
But life and mind together still combine.

I find this pretty fascinating. Definitely poetic forms I have never used before myself - way too tedious for my liking as far as writing it goes. It is interesting to compare them and I am sure there are a thousand or a million other ways I could get the AI program to generate things with the same material and they might all be interesting especially when compared to one another. You could make a whole book just experimenting to see what you could do with it.

I only make my own version of collage poetry from gathering snippets from here and there without any particular rules other than what I make up as I go along. I rarely ever actually write any poetry myself. I just compose and construct with found and gathered fragments. I don’t really write to express myself. My voice is only in my collecting habits and how I arrange things in the same way that I make collages - usually process driven and experimental just to see what will happen.

Anyway, if you made it this far, what are your thoughts?