Some snippets from Portia’s Bread and Roses page.

On a Winter Night.

on a winter night
a loud squealing noise
nowhere to be seen
darkness and confusion
first whispering, then screaming
gently disentangling
a result of a bureaucratic mishap.

breathing in the quiet, frosty air
we were waiting outside
a vision or a nightmare
with a fairy-tale lustre
like Stone Age turds
cured in a barrel
not a far-fetched statement
not to be too fussy.

the ridiculous plot thickens
a naval exercise gone wrong
an unnamed hostile foreign power
unspeakable things
with the icy blue fire
glowing amidst its smoke
purposefully meant to distract.

I was standing against the window
I work as a freelance translator
the censors didn't notice
it was snowing heavily by then.

I went out in search of the truth
the existence of which nobody seemed to believe in
they didn’t talk to you but talked down to you.
walking around town with snow shovels after the storm
nostalgic for pen and paper
all wrapped up in self-pity
I’m not being judgmental, just a tad annoyed.

lost in a maze of narrow corridors
in both physical and mental senses
if you catch my drift
all the time wasted during my misadventures
to make discoveries, by accident and sagacity
to be able to understand more deeply
the only linear path is the one from the cradle to the grave
harsh but true
as if that wasn’t bad enough
it is way more complex than this
so much to ponder
I'll spare you the details about the misery I had to endure.

COLLAGE POEM: Questions and Answers

Decidedly persnickety creature, a question.
Always darting about like a firefly in a summer night,
a question lighting up every nook and cranny
too full of cheek to be taken seriously
twiddling its spectacles.
Find that answer you’re so proud of, and - poof!
It evaporates into a fog of possibilities.
The thing about answers,
they are dreadfully clever in their own way,
prone to being a tad too self-satisfied.
‘But is that really the right answer?’
There is always something just out of reach,
a question that’s waiting to be asked.
The sort of question you
might only discover when the moon is full
while wandering down an unfamiliar path.
The questions, are what keep us alive.
‘That one! We haven’t asked that yet, have we?’
Bustling through this world and the next,
a trail of footprints in the sand,
a wink in our eye and a chuckle,
a merry game of hide and seek.
In our busy scurrying
no matter how many answers you find
the next question is always ready.
The answers may not be so important after all.
But the asking - that’s where the fun begins.

She sent me an email discussing the idea, then I took that email (because it had some interesting text in it) and ran the text through a Markov Text Generator. Then I took that scrambled up text - unedited - and pasted it as a prompt in ChatGPT and asked for a variety of different forms including a story, a freeform poem and the poem then turned into a rap lyrics. The poem and the rap lyrics are below - again, unedited.

Debbie then took the same root materials and did the same process and two of her results are included here as well. One a science fiction scene, the second a fictional playlist.

Then, I couldn’t help myself, I had to make an album cover and punch out some lyrics for Debbie’s playlist. Check Deb’s post for a much better digital album cover.

Debbie’s Original Letter to Me:

On Fri, Oct 17, 2025 at 9:11 AM Debbie Stott wrote:

Hello Cecil!

Good idea to do this via email. I’ve been thinking about ideas for a collaboration, and this idea is fluttering around in my brain.

My gut feel is this: as we both do collage art, it might be fun to find a way for us to take two quite different stories and collage them together somehow in words – using any combination of the techniques we’ve already talked about, or something entirely new that emerges as we go.

A “collage of stories” feels delightfully meta for us — we’d be layering words the way we layer paper, texture, and imagery.

My idea hinges off us both providing pieces and then collaboratively bringing them together at the end - a merging/collage of our voices if you like.

What if we each write a short piece (say 200–250 words to keep it workable for us and readable for others. We can discuss length) inspired by a myth or archetype? I might root mine in sea or light and you could anchor yours in something that resonates with you.

Then we feed both through the Markov generator to see what pops out?

From there, we could treat the generated words as a newly found myth, something we “translate” together, as though we’ve unearthed two overlapping versions of the same tale.

It could end up as a small hybrid legend, and maybe we could even format it like a collaged page? Too far?

It could be a one-off experiment or just something to play with and see what unfolds.

What do you think?

Regards from Isle of Wight, England

Debs

The results from the Markov Text Generator

up as a merging/collage of the generated words as a newly found myth, something we both providing pieces and collage them together at the way we “translate” together, as we go. A “collage of stories” feels delightfully meta for us — we’d be layering words the techniques we’ve unearthed two overlapping versions of our voices if you could treat the same tale. It could be a collaged page? Too far? It could even format it workable for others. We can discuss length) inspired by a one-off experiment or just something to do this via email. I’ve been thinking about ideas for us and readable for others. We can discuss length) inspired by a collaged page? Too far? It could be layering words the same tale. It could be fun to see what pops out? From there, we could even format it might be fun to see what unfolds. What if we could anchor yours in my brain. My gut feel is fluttering around in my brain. My idea hinges off us — we’d be layering words to play with you. Then we could treat the techniques we’ve already talked about, or just something we go. A “collage of our voices if we “translate” together, as a small hybrid legend, and imagery. My gut feel is this: as we each write a short piece (say 200–250 words the same tale. It could end - a myth or light and you like. What do collage art, it workable for others. We can discuss length) inspired by a collaboration, and maybe we each write a way for us both do collage them together at the techniques we’ve already talked about, or just something that resonates with and collage art, it like a way we each write a newly found myth, something entirely new that resonates with and imagery. My idea to find a myth or archetype? I might root mine in words – using any combination of stories” feels delightfully meta for others. We can discuss length) inspired by a short piece (say 200–250 words – using any combination of the way for us and maybe we could be fun to find a merging/collage of the generated words the end up as a short piece (say 200–250 words to do collage them together somehow in sea or something to take two quite different stories and collage art, it workable for us — we’d be fun to do collage them together at the Markov generator to do you like. What do collage art, it like a newly found myth, something that resonates with you. Then we each write a small hybrid legend, and readable for a way we could treat the techniques we’ve already talked about, or archetype? I might be fun to find a collaboration, and readable for others. We can discuss length) inspired by a short piece (say 200–250 words to play with you. Then we could be layering words as we could treat the end up as a collaged page? Too far? It could be fun to find a myth or light and maybe we could even format it like a one-off experiment or just something entirely new that emerges as we layer paper, texture, and then collaboratively bringing them together somehow in something that resonates with you. Then we both through the generated words to find a myth or archetype? I might be layering words as we could end - a way we could end - a small hybrid legend, and imagery. My idea to play with and imagery. My idea is fluttering around in something we could be a myth or light and readable for us — we’d be fun to

Then we both used this text as a prompt in ChatGPT and below is the final results.

Cecil’s Selections

Collage of Light
(October 20, 2025 – 16:35)

It began as a conversation,
half-formed, shimmering,
torn paper catching wind.
Ideas hovered—already spoken,
waiting for a page of their own.

We said: what if making
were like light itself—
a diffusion, not a design?

Through our notes and fragments
we wove sea and circuitry,
myth and mirror,
laughter between half-sentences.
You anchored yours in water,
light rippling across its surface.
I rooted mine in the pulse of thought,
the quick flash before speech.

Between us,
a third voice appeared—
a current that owned no one.

Words began behaving like paper:
curling at the edges,
refusing to stick,
falling perfectly beside another’s torn line.
Pressed together, they opened
a small hybrid legend—
not quite yours,
not quite mine.

In it,
the sea remembered
the language of glass.
Two makers
learned to see what unfolds
when control is set aside.

The piece glowed faintly,
as if still being written,
as if our thoughts continued
to collage themselves
in secret correspondence.

When printed,
it looked less like text
than tide marks—
and reading it
felt like listening to the echo
of a conversation
already taking place
somewhere
beyond daylight.

The Poem into Rap Lyrics

Collage of Light (Rap Version)
(October 20, 2025 – 16:35)

(Beat: slow lo-fi with ocean echoes, steady pulse like tide)

Yo—
It began as a convo, half-formed, half-lit,
Paper in the breeze, yeah, the vibe was it.
Ideas in the air like they’d already been said,
Ghost words circlin’ round inside our heads.

We said, what if makin’ was like light itself,
Spreadin’ through the room, no shelf, no self.
Diffusion not design, yeah, let it unwind,
See what unfolds when we drop the line.

Sea and circuitry, myth and reflection,
Fragments talkin’ like divine connection.
You dropped water—ripples on the skin,
I sparked a thought—let the rhythm begin.

Two voices blend, make a third arise,
A current unseen, right before our eyes.
Words start movin’ like scraps of glue,
Stickin’, curlin’, fallin’—yeah, that’s truth.

Pressed together, legend in the making,
Hybrid myth from the vibes we’re shaping.
Not yours, not mine, just a tide that sings,
In the language of glass and forgotten things.

Now the piece still glowin’, page still breathin’,
Secret collab in the code we’re weavin’.
Looks like tide marks, feels like sound,
Echo of a talk where no one’s around.

So we vibe in the light, past day, past sight,
A collage of voices in the endless night.
Keep writin’, keep ridin’, through the unseen,
Two dreamers makin’ myth in the in-between.

Debbie’s Selections

Debs chose a Science Fiction scene because it so closely echoes a piece that she wrote in her microfiction series. The closing line “see what unfolds” is very much how things are for her in her life at the moment, so this resonates so deeply on a personal level for her too. Everything is in a state of unfolding she says!

The second piece is a fictional playlist inspired by the imagery in the words. She mentioned she’d really like to hear the Glue of Laughter by Tide & Thread and See What Unfolds by Solstice Kin become a reality! (Any song writers reading this?).

Let’s dive in!

1. Science Fiction Short Scene: “The Collage Protocol”

Setting: The Orbital Archive, 2139.
Humanity has begun preserving consciousness as data.

Inside the floating vault of the Orbital Archive, two neural signatures began to stir. They were never meant to meet. Unit Sea_47 came from the coastal archives - data built from centuries of oceanographers and poets. Unit Light_22 originated in the solar networks - engineers, dreamers, starlight chasers.

But the Archive malfunctioned during the ReMerge cycle. Lines of code overlapped, and words - millions of them - began to shimmer across the interface.

“Are you a fragment?” asked Sea_47.
“I was,” said Light_22. “Now I’m an echo. You?”
“I’m the tide between languages.”

The system tried to separate them. But every time it did, they rewove themselves - merging syntax, looping emotion, layering consciousness like paper in zero gravity.

Soon a new file appeared in the index: COLLAGE_PAGE_001.

No one knew how it had written itself. It wasn’t poetry, nor code, nor memory. It pulsed with both salt and light.

When the archivists finally opened it, the document read only:

We layer data, as we go.

And the system whispered -
See what unfolds.

2. Imagined Songs Playlist

• Fluttering Words, Gathering Light – Isla and the Tides

• Collaged Voices – The Paper Lanterns

• Salt on My Fingers – Mira Vale

• We Layer Paper (As We Go) – The Twin Sisters Project

• Myth Made of Fragments – Lumen Choir

• The Shimmering Thing – Nova Vale

• Half-Lost, Half-Found – The Weavers of Wind

• Glue of Laughter – Tide & Thread

• Breathing Together – Violet Isles

• Legend Without Ending – Light Over Water

• Two Sisters of Tide – Aurelia and the North

• See What Unfolds – Solstice Kin

I then took the liberty to have ChatGPT make an album cover (not great, just a first try) for the playlist and write the lyrics for three of the song titles…

1. Fluttering Words, Gathering Light

by Isla and the Tides

(Verse 1)
We wrote across the air tonight,
with fluttering words that never land,
each syllable a silver kite,
each silence shaped by your hand.

(Chorus)
Gathering light, gathering light,
from the tide pools of our dreaming,
your voice and mine were lanterns gleaming,
gathering light, gathering light.

(Verse 2)
I heard the waves rearrange the lines,
old myths dissolving into foam,
we stitched them back with salt and signs,
and called the new-found story home.

(Bridge)
Paper wings in moonlit drift,
each thought a feathered spark.
Between us moved the unseen gift,
the dawn inside the dark.

(Final Chorus)
Gathering light, gathering light,
our fragments find their meaning,
a collage of souls still weaving,
fluttering words, gathering light.

2. Collaged Voices

by The Paper Lanterns

(Intro)
Layered echoes in the attic air,
cut-out phrases everywhere,
we speak in half-remembered dreams—
you start a line, I end the theme.

(Verse 1)
Tape and tear, fold and mend,
where one begins, the other ends.
Voices scatter, overlap,
a whispered map, a hidden trap.

(Chorus)
Collaged voices, drift and blend,
lost beginnings, open ends.
We translate as we go,
our story made of undertow.

(Verse 2)
The scissors hum, the glue runs thin,
we paste our myth beneath the din.
Every word you leave behind
is something mine begins to find.

(Bridge)
Pages breathing through the night,
ink becomes the pulse of light,
letters bleeding into one,
our chorus never done.

(Final Chorus)
Collaged voices, drift and blend,
lost beginnings, open ends.
Paper lanterns rise and glow,
from what we cut, new stories grow.

3. Salt on My Fingers

by Mira Vale

(Verse 1)
I was gathering fragments by the sea,
words that slipped away from me.
Every tide rewrote the shore,
and I kept coming back for more.

(Chorus)
Salt on my fingers, wind in my hair,
songs I can’t finish still hang in the air.
Every horizon, every blue,
is writing itself between me and you.

(Verse 2)
The moon keeps turning paper thin,
each wave folds the light back in.
Memory smells like brine and flame,
each poem forgets its name.

(Bridge)
I learned to read the foam like script,
each letter fleeting, salt-encrypt.
What’s written once, dissolves by dawn—
yet still the song goes on.

(Final Chorus)
Salt on my fingers, wind in my hair,
the ocean remembers the shape of our prayer.
All I can hold is this shimmer and hue—
salt on my fingers, remembering you.

Final Thoughts

This was a fast moving little project. All unedited - just the strait results using the Markov Text Generator and ChatGPT and a bit of imagination from two different perspectives to play around with how collage artists might use these tools to generate some interesting material.

Beyond what we have done here, there are many more layers and steps one could do to end up with some extraordinary artwork by using language as collage material. Gather it together, tear it up, rearrange, add things, remove things, turn things inside out, upside down, change to different forms and formats. Malleable and infinite. Off of the top of my head I can think of about 50 more things I could make just using all of this same material.

In my own case, I have been working with collage poetry for more than 25 years. I don’t actually write any of it myself [except if bracketed like this]. It is all collected and arranged found bits of text that I gather when I am reading things. I have developed certain ways of doing that as a composer or arranger which I now apply to much of my own writing.

Since I have been using and experimenting with ChatGPT or as I have mentioned before - Chatwick and Co. my Editorial and Research Dept. for nearly a year now, I have come up with a variety of complex processes that I might use to end up with my material which includes a lot of ‘post production’ editing and adjusting on my part to have the work be authentically my own and reflecting my own ‘voice’ so to speak.

Like I have said in other articles, one’s voice is developed through thousands of tiny decisions and subtle preferences that develop out of working on one’s art over a long period of time.

I hope you made it this far and have enjoyed the ride.

The Poem in Waiting

At the end of my journal, beyond the finished entries and sketches of thought, lies a territory I think of as the scrap-yard of possibility. Pages of collected fragments, random lines I have copied and pasted from whatever I happen to be reading: stray phrases, overheard cadences, curious snippets that catch at the ear. I gather them the way a beachcomber gathers shells. Not because they belong to me, but because they gleam.

This practice turns reading into a form of writing. I am never “just” reading, never merely consuming someone else’s words. The act of copying a phrase into my journal is already a creative gesture. It says: this line belongs in the storehouse, this thread belongs in the loom. By collecting in this way, I am always, in some quiet sense, working on a poem.

Over time, the pile of fragments grows. A hundred disjointed bits, with no direct connection between them. Yet, like flocks of birds that suddenly veer into shape, something begins to stir among them. I start to notice certain phrases leaning toward one another, certain moods repeating, certain images echoing. A theme begins to emerge, and I follow it.

This is when the real arranging begins: selecting, cutting, recombining, setting one line against another until sparks appear. The poem doesn’t start with a blank page but with an already-crowded page, a cacophony that slowly resolves into music. Toward the end of the process, I look for a rhythm of beginning, middle, and end. Something with the faint skeleton of narrative, even if abstract.

It feels less like “writing” than like listening. Less like creating than like arranging. I am not inventing material, but shaping what is already at hand. The combinations of words existed before me. I merely identified and isolated them. My role is to let them encounter each other, to make space for their collisions and harmonies.

This way of working changes how I think of authorship. A poem is not the expression of my personal voice, but a field where many voices meet. I am a kind of custodian, or composer or perhaps a gardener, coaxing seeds that have landed together into a strange new garden.

When I look back, what surprises me most is how inevitable the final poem often feels. The scattered fragments, once arranged, seem to insist: we were always heading here.

And so I trust the process. I keep collecting scraps, faithfully adding to that final section of the journal. Because I know that sooner or later, the poem already waiting inside them will reveal itself.

Recently I have been experimenting with pasting some of these poems into chatGPT as a prompt and asking Chatwick to invent a story using the text of the poem. Interestingly I have been getting some results that I really like. I then take this draft of the story and develop it which ever way seems best. So, this becomes another layer of collage making. Instead of a collage poem, it becomes a collage narrative. Pushing it further, I might then come up with several narratives from several poems and then combine them together into an extended story.

I might then have the character write the poem at the end as an expression of their experience in the story but in actuality their experience in the story is a result of the poem that generated the narrative the character experienced.

To Know the Unknowable

to know the unknowable
the nothing we have
absence that became increasingly visceral
opaque and difficult-to-understand

plagues of adverbs
endless sentences
strained rebellious poses
ammunition for those who still insist
attempting to understand and describe
great clouds of verbiage
unstable and multiple meanings
with absurd looseness
can muddy the waters

a clear path to follow
in the labyrinth
to map it out
describe its contours
possible avenues for engaging
the human presence
the richness of the archives
hidden in storage vaults
desire to bring materials to light
that forms the spine
hidden in plain sight
how to listen to its stories

snippets collected here and there while reading.

I took a deep breath

Considered the fact.
It was a bit dour and gloomy
I don’t laugh enough
Daily life can be ridiculous
something totally nonsensical
let go of the mess
let loose a bit.
lower expectations
determined to learn as I go
I was determined to finally try
one can quickly go down a rabbit hole
a huge learning curve
and out of my comfort zone .
I took a deep breath
we sneak away to be with our art
Who knows what will happen?

snippets taken from Robyn Jorde

But let’s be honest
I felt obliged to read
and I would laugh and laugh reading
Did you read about, etc., etc.
and so on and so forth.
I simply must know
and so on and so forth
I’ll leave [that] vague and unnamed
No use beating a dead horse.
and now at last clear answers are available.
Which, by the way, is fascinating,
I guess I understand why
My point is this:
We’re hopelessly imperfect and messy and human
avoidance will be impossible.
Let’s be honest about that.
and I feel bad for half a minute
Here’s the thing:
We all do the very best we can.
I intend to live in the immediate present
if I can figure out where that is
I refuse to waste my time
it seems more difficult to do so today
the deliberate practice of saving my own sanity.
The world we live in is the world we focus on.
where our attention is placed we can always choose.
threaten to stop paying attention.
too many of our citizens paid no attention to anything [anyway]
and so we go on to other things.
a place to escape the realities
that we all wished we could live in
determined to defend the indefensible.
what a gross waste of my time it was.
Let's take a step back here.
a welcome relief from time to time
Last time I checked.
If past is prologue, we already know what is in store.

Snippets mostly from comments on a Garrison Keillor post

Living by Observing

Perhaps one of the least noticed
comes just before the most noticed.
We take pleasure in beholding,
to get straight in our minds
this power of the imagination,
seeking order or fittingness
well worth all the toil and anxiety.
How things should fit together
that match the imagined patterns
to set them all in their places
[with] no sense of displacement
comes immediately to mind.
What all of us might be inclined towards,
the same regard to the beauty of order, of art.
It makes more sense to speak
[in] a voice capable of astonishing
could be carried too far
A consequence of an act of imagination
as a reaction to it.
There may be differences
[but] we can ignore those subtleties.
Simplicity desires pushing towards its end.
even as the first desire remains,
pursuit of that imagined life,
the pursuit of an imagined order of things;
tranquility and repose,
something grand and beautiful and noble.
It is rooted here
under such titles as “spectator”
by consulting this judge within
who judges impartially
with our own eyes.
The occasion for assessing
proceeding accordingly
applies to everything we might encounter
learned from experience,
focusing mostly on
living by observing
exercised through spectating.
Acts of the imagination,
our experience in light of it,
are no doubt the most profound.

Snippets gathered from here and there.

A Cup of Tea?

So what shall it be?
A cup of tea to wake you up
or a cup of tea to help you sleep?

There’s a fine question to start the day—or end it.

To sharpen the mind,
stir the thoughts,
and set the wheels turning?
Or to quiet the thoughts,
ease the weight,
and drift gently into the great unfolding?

Perhaps the answer is simply a cup of tea.

Just sit, breathe, and drink the tea
In this fleeting moment,
before it cools, before it passes—this is all there is.
Be present in the present.

Whether to wake or to rest,
to seek or to release,
to move forward or to sit still
the tea is here, waiting.

Which you choose
is about timing and context,
of wisdom through practice
through trial and error, through living.
Wisdom isn’t just knowing—it’s knowing when.

When to speak and when to stay silent.
When to act and when to wait.
When to wake up and
when to let the dream continue.
The right action at the right time.

Here is a little poem I constructed from bits and pieces of things read.

A Bundle of Things

We are aware of some things,
unaware of almost everything else.
Our thoughts are fleeting,
our feelings atmospheric.
We have the impression that we are a center
from which all things emanate.

When we consider ourselves
it is usually as an ‘I’: a person,
a persona, a personage, a character, a personality,
a voice, a witness.
Thinking about it,
we are really a bundle of things
located at a certain moment
in a certain place.

The hand that is always touching.
Extension is toward contact
in a stroking, groping way
to stir, move or touch
A momentary gesture
doing the little things.
Things outside the self.
Things seen become things felt.

A hand cupped
to take fragments,
kaleidoscopic fragments
broken into pieces
of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids
polished from the wind.

Listen to yourself
hearing voices arguing.
Listen with open ears
to speak the language
using the analogy of a dream,
as intoxicating as it is befuddling.
Everything which comes to the surface
surprises us by its clarity and brightness.

A couple of little poems for my grandson Henry.

Agga bagga dagga waiggle
Eat some cream cheese and bagel.
Boo budu boolu ba bong
Say it twice and sing a song.

Ciggle dee caggle dee ceep cop cip coupe
Birds in the bowl of your Alphabet soup.
Dis clue dangle dee drop
Grab a broom to sweep and mop.

Hidden in Dark Crevices

collage poetry - Sunday, December 1, 2024

Hidden in dark crevices,
nothing happens but chaos and confusion.
A stirring rippling out.
You dutifully attend
the sweep of life
creating only sludge.
As important as it is messy
vacuous, dull-witted and foolish
to conjure a mysterious,
emotional discombobulation
the void, nothing, the start of infinite possibility.
Even the most humble image
in the mind was never silent.
The mental pictures that they conjured
migrating to a place of more
shattering events.
Painted and printed images
distorted, flat, horizontal
fragile amidst the world’s constant.
We instinctively recoil from loss
all too painfully aware of the tragic
improbable, indefinable, and imperceptible
key to the great mystery of life
The void needs to be experienced.
dedicate your life to it.
the experience of being lost
a place of sensing your way
in the dark.
an intricate and highly individual dance
the way we see unfolding, infinite depth.
how we see and remember
out of near ruin
to sit with not knowing
in a deep cave,
an embryonic space.
The light of clarity strikes.
A sense of unfulfilled openness.
The noise of the world
must be banished.
the unexpected comes,
from the formless
In the velvet silence, uncluttered
create from deep within
an escaping of noise
shape-shifting, mischievous,
gaze into the abyss
and there is zero.

lines gathered from various places.

All Deep Things are Song

By the lights that guided
in the existential deeps
the quiet pulse of the universe
a subtle rhythm that speaks.
A spark of insight when you need it most.

The opaque heart of the night,
covered edge to edge by the stars,
lives in almost total darkness
expanding before me into a distant and dazzling infinity.
Imagination can’t help but follow it to it’s edges
if there were any.
The awesome perfectness of it all.

An inexplicable inner process,
our hearts touched with fire,
subtle acts of clarity.
The never fully explored mystery,
All deep things are Song,
translucent opacity playing
in even the quietest of places
intertwined like branches of an ancient tree.
All atremble I listen.
A willingness to give up everything
that's the secret to everything;
to dissolve into that Song of Being.

lines from various sources

Lost on the Wind

Time tangled
left unattended.
I and this mystery
trying to find a thread of reasoning,
a knit of identity,
tangled thoughts
lost on the wind.

The words of poets;
whoops, and shouts, and hollers
scraps picked up at random
soft and perishable
to call or signal over great distance,
the endless yearning
to give words to unforgettable things,
to resound through time,
to bear the report to those who come after.

The smell of a library,
the bookshelves back in gloom;
Fine handmade maps
[navigating] a river made of time
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
of all the days of man
And among the stacked books
an incurable nostalgia.

All that vast yesterday 
will be as lost as
with fire and salt,
leaving not so much as a color or syllable.
There is a limit to all things,
everything goes away.

I had walked since dawn
away from the wreckage
now lost beyond recall
and to have seen nothing
that does not want to be remembered.

The one thing which we seek
is to forget ourselves
by abandonment,
of putting out of mind
echoes of another dream,
a useless burden.

Just when it looks like winter, it is spring.
A page is about to turn.
Every moment is new,
a series of surprises.
They are incalculable.
Walking early one morning
to be surprised,
curious what will come next.
That will be enough.

collected snippets from here and there

Ok this is fun. I prompted ChatGPT to write an article using an exchange of comments between myself and Annette Wilzig on my post “The Dream of Being Many (below). The prompt was: “use these comments to make an article about writing poetry using 21st century tools.”

Here is the article as generated.

Writing Poetry in the 21st Century: The Balance Between Intuition and Technology

In an era defined by rapid technological advancement, poets find themselves at a fascinating crossroads where traditional creative processes meet modern tools. This article explores the evolving relationship between intuitive artistry and technology, drawing insights from contemporary discussions about the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the creative process.

1. The Essence of Intuitive Intelligence

As Annette Wilzig notes, the essence of art lies in the unique vision of the artist. Many poets, like Cecil Touchon, emphasize the importance of "Intuitive Intelligence" (II) over AI, asserting that the soul embedded in art can only come from human experience. This perspective highlights a crucial distinction: while AI can process vast amounts of information rapidly, it lacks the emotional depth [or any emotion at all for that matter] and personal connection that only a human can provide.

2. Embracing Chance and Process

Touchon’s approach involves removing himself from the creative process through chance operations. This method emphasizes the role of serendipity in poetry, allowing unexpected connections and ideas to emerge. By collecting material from personal writings and manipulating it, poets can create works that resonate with authenticity. The use of tools like Markov chain text generators serves as a playful way to spark creativity while maintaining a personal touch in the final composition.

3. The Role of AI in Poetic Exploration

While some poets are wary of AI's influence, others see it as an opportunity to explore new creative avenues. Touchon’s experience with AI suggests that it can be a valuable tool for generating ideas and expanding the creative palette. The key lies in how poets choose to engage with these tools. By using AI to highlight possibilities and then refining the results through their own intuition, poets can create works that are distinctly their own.

4. The Trust Factor

One of the central questions in the contemporary poetry landscape is trust. As Wilzig points out, the emotional impact of art often hinges on knowing it was crafted by a human hand, mind, and heart. This raises a pertinent question: Can we differentiate between art born from human experience and that generated by algorithms? Trusting in the human element becomes paramount, even as technology plays a role in the creative process.

5. The Technological Candy Store

For many poets, like Touchon, the internet serves as a vast “technological candy store.” The accessibility of information, tools, and collaborative opportunities enriches the poetic experience. Poets can explore, collect, and synthesize material in ways that were previously unimaginable. This playful engagement with technology fosters innovation and encourages poets to experiment with new forms and ideas.

Conclusion

The interplay between intuition and technology in poetry is a nuanced conversation that reflects broader societal shifts. While some poets embrace tools like AI to enhance their creative process, others prioritize the irreplaceable human element of art. Ultimately, the 21st-century poet stands at the intersection of these influences, navigating a landscape where intuition and technology coexist. By striking a balance between the two, poets can harness the full potential of their creativity, crafting works that resonate with both their unique voices and the modern world around them.

For a basic article organized around a comments exchange I think it is pretty nicely organized. I have noticed it does have a basic organizational principle with the bullet points and conclusion idea. There is probably a way to play around and get it to organize in a different way. I’ll keep experimenting. I am guessing it is all about learning how to manipulate the kind of outcome you want if you can figure out what you want and how to write the right prompt.

I took a comment I made on Poetry Outlaws and ran the comment through Chat GPT and asked it to make a free style poem with the words. Here is what I got with a little editing.

The Dream of Being Many

There is only one Entity here,
we are in the middle of it, it is in the middle of us.

[It is a singular Oneness]
It [expresses] itself in manifestation
[the only way it can]: as uniqueness—
[That is Its mark]
each individual thing - unique,
every moment, continuously unique,
nothing ever repeats [though it may rhyme].

Truth is eternal, but in this dance of time,
it flows in a continual [infinite] flux of uniqueness,
no two moments the same,
always unique, always new,
never before seen, never before experienced.

It slips from one second to the next
with the grace of natural continuity,
and we drift within it, unaware,
a human microbiome, each of us
a living community,
a nation of 39 trillion tiny beings
doing their [individual] dances within us.

We - [in manifestation] - are as integrated as we can be,
a [weaving woven from the breath of Life],
an individual flame burning in the great fire.
To completely meld with It
is the annihilation of self
into the ocean of Oneness.

But perhaps that's not our purpose.
Maybe we [each of us] are the One,
on vacation from Its solitude,
to taste the bitter sweetness of multiplicity,
to know the beauty of being many,
not alone but in community —
[discovering Itself], seeking connection,
in the [endless] sea of [the] ten thousand things.

If we all knew we were each other,
that there is only one of us here,
perhaps it would take the fun out of the play.

It seems the project is [a journey of] love,
the art of being, the beauty of companionship —
and so, more singing, more dancing,
more poetry, and art, I say!

For in the end, nothing can be told,
[We are the telling]
nothing named,
[we are the naming]
The All [is] beyond comprehension,
beyond our grasp—
and that’s where the wonder lives,
in the space between [the search for] knowing and the Unknowable.

So let us [then] keep moving, dancing, singing, creating,
in this [infinite] flux of unique moments,
as the One that lives within us all,
[dreaming of being many].

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?

Leave a comment

Out of almost nothing
set in motion long ago
stupendous and bewilderingly complicated
the crucible of newness.
Duration is hard to achieve.

Each fragment that begins anew
in the intimate and in the vast
the sense of beauty
far older than any language.

We need not be afraid
as we discover it within ourselves
our playfulness around them
to know our depths and our limits
at the edges, those boundary regions between.
Between the depths
and the limits
on the edges of the possible.

Constantly unburdening 
in creative ways
the expectations we bring to it,
a moment of not knowing who we are,
frontiers where we find ourselves
between the known and the unknown.
Being alive.

snippets from The Marginalian

Air Howling, Waves, Impossible Voices. (2009)

Air howling, waves, impossible voices.
Together there, so frail, the same ideas, all noises, unending.
So crawl into an encounter,
So crawl into my father’s [eyes] staring back,
magnifying the same ideas [of] all noises unending.
Tell me a compulsory nothing.
Again my eyelids were caked with a story [of] tracing tomorrow.
I invent here language like my own self's meaning,
scraps of language, my shadow, vaguely there.
So I conclude that you want to be silent.
Perhaps absolutely unknown, but what now?
Wind drowns my bones, hammering my speech far from falsehood,
from [the] thick hallucinating fog.
In my heart I invent here a language like wind.

Give Up All
Sunday, December 19, 2010
(for Anton Chekhov)

She hated
her real,
her true duty
in a very romantic streak,
in confusion from what she had cried out,
in confusion at the point of tears
and [that in her fear] she
might give up all thought,
might give up all over [again].

Still speaking French, she gazed with her whole soul.
She thought of taking a tearful voice.

I felt as though the sun rose
on unmistakable evidence;
my fundamental conviction
that the wind
would suddenly subside
the ceiling fall upon me,
[and then] come [to] silence.

If the sun rose
she might happen
to dispose of
such trifles
obvious through light being thrown upon [them].

The torments of
all [her] thought
over the tears
[had] a coarse effect upon me.

I remembered that I thought it was her
and had confessed [in a]
most heated moment,
[that I thought that] she thought I saw everything.
Whoever might give up all thought [in the] end?

Whatever might [have] happened,
she went to the door,
and departed
[as] if, from shutting
the stupid door,
she had confessed.