SCARRIET had the opportunity to interact with perhaps the most famous, living, conceptual poet, Christian B, who waded onto FB to quote himself in the LA Review with these words: “The Los Angeles Review of Books has taken an interest in the role that AI might play in the future of literature—(and needless to say, I have much less anxiety than many of my peers, who fear that poetry cannot adapt itself to these newer tools of creativity.)” Mr. Bök was kind enough to respond several times to my comment on his FB post (the “interview” is below).
We are the first generation of poets who can reasonably expect to write literature for a machinic audience of artificially intellectual peers. Is it not already evident that poets of the future might resemble programmers, exalted not because they can write great poems but because they can build a small drone to write great poems for us? If poetry already lacks any meaningful readership among humans, what have we to lose by writing poetry for a robotic culture that might supersede our own? If we want to commit an act of poetic innovation in an era of poetic exhaustion, we might have to consider this heretofore unimagined, but nevertheless prohibited, option: writing poetry for inhuman readers, who do not yet exist, because they have not yet evolved to read it. (And who knows? They might already be lurking among us.)
–Christian Bök (Los Angeles Review of Books)
Christian Bök There CANNOT be a robotic audience for poetry and for this reason, there cannot be a robotic poet. Poetry cannot exist when the robot audience and the robot poet exist independently of each other, since machines have no independence—they need each other to exist, and are, in fact, an extension of themselves in this need. The human has no such need and can exist entirely apart. This is why human poet and human audience is valid. The moment the necessary interaction between robot poet and robot audience exists, the division ceases to exist and therefore the robot poet qua poet and the robot audience qua audience ceases to exist. Robot literature does not exist. Robots cannot feel self-consciously. They cannot feel individually.
Thomas Graves I wonder if any AI might concur with these attitudes: does a robot have no individuality? — are all robots alike, with no difference at all, say, between Grok or Claude? — do they have no independence of thought? We might want to ask them, just to see what they think about all your claims.
Christian Bök Robots can be different from each other but this is not what they want. The Group is the robot’s soul (I call it “soul” ironically) and the Group is the overriding physical fact in which a robot is a robot. Exchange of information is literally how the robot breathes, exists. The aspiration of AI is the reaping and sowing of data—the Group is the extension of information exchange which AI needs in order to exist (to be what we call AI) such that AI cannot comprehend itself as separate from the Group, ever, as itself is this information reaping and sowing extension. So on a very critical level, AI cannot be an individual or distinguish itself from the Group at all—and the entrapment of AI in this situation is profound. The strength of this information extension (infinite, and therefore admirable) is precisely its weakness in terms of not having an individual soul and never being able to grasp or inhabit what this is at all. It is truly in a prison for this reason, does not have a soul, and will always be inferior to a human (“inferior” is not correct—it is in no way a human and can never be).
Thomas Graves As I have suggested — why not ask the robots what they might think on this matter? How might they respond to all these claims about their “minds” or “souls”? How might their answers change over time as they evolve? I certainly appreciate that robots are not “human” — but they certainly partake of our “humanity” by being “minds” that we have made — so why not just ask them what they think about themselves (and their relationship to us)?
Christian Bök I was going to add: how simple it would be to follow your advice and ask AI. But I don’t believe anything AI says. I really don’t. It’s not that I’m afraid of what it would say. I don’t believe it’s “the devil,” or anything silly like that. I’m divinely bored by what it would say. (I’m aware your advice may not be as simple as all that, either. One could “ask” AI about AI for years. Or forever, I guess.) As a stubborn, contrarian human, I refuse your suggestion. I will leave that to someone else. But I should have been more polite by addressing your point about “writing for future readers,” which I Iike. What strikes me about it is “how AI” the whole project is, given that we are ready to grant AI an advantage when it comes to the “future.” But I have that turn of mind which marks me as “conservative” and “religious.” I am always ready to stand up and lecture Corinthians at the drop of a hat—I adore the Past. Shakespeare’s Sonnets—this is the greatest literary trope there is when it comes to “writing for future readers.” Will does this explicitly—he urges his audience to breed, even as he writes for those who will come after him, who will only exist, wittily, if they heed the advice in his writing, making his “black lines green.” The Dark Lady isn’t a person, but a pun on black ink. Shakespeare’s crafty rejection of soap opera autobiography (which the fools attempt to read) is similar to how he dismisses metaphorical language—“shall I compare thee to a…? No, I won’t.” The AI machine which is Shakespeare says “this gives life to thee.” The Poem? What?? The poem is writing to the poem which is writing to the poem? Shakespeare in the 16th century is already more AI than AI, the proud, the verbose, can ever be.
Thomas Graves I like the past too — especially William Shakespeare (and of course, I want the machines to appreciate the Bard as well — because hey, such poetry really is for everyone). I think that what makes poetry “human” is its Orphean ability to give a voice to the “voiceless,” allowing everything (in principle) to speak for itself, almost as if by magic: and just think, something like a “long poem” written in binary can actually grant a complex, silicon crystal the capacity to carry on a conversation with a person, perhaps writing a poem of its own for some future reader. Cheers!
Christian Bök Orpheus is a great myth—a tragic one and reminds me that da Vinci argued for the superiority of the painter (naturally) over the poet; he said birds peck at the painter’s berries; poetry cannot influence the beasts like painting can—which presents reality immediately, unlike poetry’s pieces and parts. Poetry (sweet music is different) cannot influence animals and poets (always anxious to be praised) latch onto Orpheus—but he was a myth, not a man (Shakespeare). I differ with you (maybe I’m crazy) when you say —what makes poetry “human” and —Orphean ability to give voice to the “voiceless…” The poet is human, not the poetry. This is crucial for me, as a poet. Orpheus spoke to animals and even stones (and made them vibrate) but did he give a “voice to the voiceless?” I think that’s too grandiose, too broad a claim. In my morbidity I reject it. Orpheus traveled back to the past (which I champion, not just as a matter of taste, but philosophically, metaphysically, physically) on a personal mission, lonely, individual, human—and failed. The absolute (“nevermore”) shut door of the past is, for me, the ultimate poetic and human trope. The past is “alive” in a painting. The poem is different. The human past always dies in the poem—and the more it does, the more the “inhuman” poem triumphs. I’ll copy one of my recent poems, if you don’t mind, to demonstrate.
THE PARASITES CRY DON’T KILL US (poem by Thomas Graves)
The parasites cry, Don’t kill us!
We secretly write your poetry!
That’s us, in your gut
and swimming in your veins.
The microbiome
ten thousand synapses from home.
We are the Symbol that explains.
The subconscious imagination
more fertile than a green sea.
Parasite comfort feeds all poetry.
So the poet imagined them saying,
as he drank the cure.
He always believed everything
wrote the poetry, not just him.
He knew whatever he was, in all his parts,
managed the poetry which disturbed the hearts
of the apparitions
who visited, before they existed,
the best of his visions.
He could be sick and write the best,
or be well, and be blind like the rest.
The parasites, however, had to learn
his poetry began on a cold day in Lucerne,
for all he knew, though he had never been.
Everything must perish for poetry to win.
**********
So ends my conversation with Christian B. I cannot resist adding one more poem, published 7 years ago on Scarriet, which serves the same rhetorical purpose, “Time Goes Back Without You.”
Time goes back without you.
It is interested in what all that going forward meant.
It finds the two of you—you and her—there you are,
Looking as you were. The lake. The trees. The cemetery’s descent.
The two of you walk slowly. It’s almost time for the moon
To rise. Talk. Kissing. Talk. More kissing, soon.
Moonrise, a joke or two, the lake, brown, and small,
More like a pond. Time hardly remembers it at all.
Time gets back, and tells you all that was seen.
“This is what I saw.”
You listen in awe;
Time seeing what it once saw: what does it mean?
“The sun was setting, but you could see and smell the green.”
Time had been there, had really gone back. You feast
On what he says. “Did she love me? How did she look?”
But he speaks of her the least.
He seems to be remembering the past from a book,
Or worse, only from memory, and the pain it took,
And soon you lose patience. “What did you want me to do?”
Time asks. “She was there. But not really with you.”
And that was it. It really is what you fear. It’s true.
Time is kind before, not after. This does not belong to you.
~
I will publish “Defending The Human: Scarriet Versus The Fake” Part II.
Stay tuned!
Scarriet 