The Procrastinating Poet

There’s a part of me – a nostalgic, desperate part – that wants to recreate in adulthood the sense of time I had when I was a child. For as long as I can remember my life has been measured by the American school calendar, a curiosity anywhere outside our borders.

(A Danish guest at a family dinner a few weeks back was almost as shocked by this as by our systems of healthcare.)

Millions of my peers have happily (or begrudgingly) discarded this for a “grown up” calendar built around vacation days and sick leave. If I stop teaching, I’ll need to do the same. 

Grinches and overworked retail employees might point out that the “holiday cycle” is a euphemism for marketing campaigns. But that doesn’t matter to a child. An average child in the U.S. measures time in steadily increasing enchantments: the first day of school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s; a buffer, and then Valentine’s Day, Easter, spring break, and the long languid freedom that characterizes our summer breaks. 

At some point this fades, and between the slow end of childhood and the dawn of parenthood, most holidays become strange: it feels a bit silly to celebrate them, but it feels grotesque to ignore them. I’ve made compromises with the minor ones: I’ll look for a sprig of green on Saint Patrick’s Day, give a solemn nod on Labor Day, think about trees on Earth Day, etc. – midnight passes, and I might feel a prick of guilt for my non-observance. 

I hadn’t heard of All Saints Day (“All Hallows”) and All Souls Day until comparatively late. I was in grad school, living alone for the first time in my life, and the idea of a “feast day” was new and Romantic. I wasn’t Catholic, and didn’t know the rules, so I took a literal interpretation: one day, I assumed, celebrates all the saints, the other celebrates all the souls that are now, have been, and ever shall be. 

I know a little more now. But I still like my first interpretation. Every “Allhallowtide” (Oct. 31 – Nov. 2) for the last four years, I’ve tried to “celebrate” these days in the awkward, private way I’m accustomed to with all the minor holidays. And I end up with an amalgamated mush of inward rituals: some confused prayer, some baffled reflection; once or twice, a piece of writing that never sees daylight. I take the days in their broadest possible meaning, transfixed by the sheer magnitude of that word “All.”

Questions arise. Doesn’t the “All” in “All Souls” supersede the “All” in “All Saints?” If you take the traditional, limited observance of All Souls to include only the souls of the faithful Catholic departed, doesn’t that encompass the saints, who must, in order to be saints, have died? Why the distinction – and why commemorate them as their own days to begin with?

Holidays – holy days – outwardly constrict the expressions of devotion. They do this in a way that even observers recognize as artificial. I was raised to understand, for instance, that to a believing Christian, every day is Easter; every day is Christmas. But these days – and in some traditions, entire seasons in preparation (Lent, Advent) – still have their place on the calendar. Some fundamentalists, and a few major sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, dismiss holidays altogether as superfluous (or worse); but the majority of people embrace and celebrate holidays which they recognize as, technically, “redundant.” 

I would rather have redundant holidays than none at all. Life is short, and the world is wide. 

Our ancestors lived at the mercy of the seasons. In most of the last 12,000 years, the cycles of harvest and planting were probably the most important things in the world. Civilization was impossible without them, and even the most remote urban elite were wracked with more anxiety about agriculture and natural disaster than most of us can imagine now. Seasonal changes, and the recurring holidays that commemorated them, were unbelievably significant. To be freed from this mode of life is a blessing and a curse.  

To have survived another cycle of seasons, another trip around the sun, and landed on the same day, in the face of all the vagaries and tribulations of the year, was and is a powerful feeling. No matter how much we’d like to abstract out the “meaning” of certain holidays from their position on the calendar, we can’t ultimately rid ourselves of the instinctual “rightness” of the connection between a fixed date and what it celebrates.

Even so: why only one day for “All Souls?” As I understood the day, and still do – as a day to honor and celebrate, literally, every human person – it seems to express a conception found, at least nominally, in most major religions, and in most generous secular attitudes (humanism et. al.). If every day is Easter, surely every day is All Souls Day. 

And it’s an impossible task, too, especially for 24 hours: the “All” covers, quite literally, the totality of human existence. 

I think it comes down to human weakness. As with religion, so with literature and art. We have vocabularies to express the infinite; we have access to registers of thought and experience which can hint at, or reach, heights of sublimity, ecstasy, super-human conceptions of life, and all the rest. We all – at least I hope – have experienced something like transcendence, and something like agape, an all-consuming, overpowering sensation of charity and respect and love for the whole human family; but we can’t maintain it. The noblest aims of art – to expand the self, to produce a deeper sense of love – run up against the same reality: we can never “stay” in one place. We can’t live in that frame of mind indefinitely. Some of us can stay in the heights for longer, and some of us (the “saints,” I suppose, “known and unknown”) are up there for most of the time. But everyone comes down. We get hungry, and we need things. Transcendence needs constant nourishment.  

Which means we need to take things in small pieces. We need to pace ourselves. And we need to repeat some things year after year. Every day is and ought to be All Souls Day – but most of us aren’t there yet. 

What stories about AI – and AGI – are we accepting as “normal” at this point?

I.

Imagine waking up at 4:00 AM in a foreign hotel. There’s a racket going on in the hallway. It’s impossible to sleep with all the commotion, and after grumbling a bit, you put on some pants and open your door. You’re not the only one: an entire hallway full of bleary-eyed guests are poking their heads out to see what’s going on.

Everyone around you is speaking a language you don’t know. All the guests seem concerned – a handful are jubilant. One of them points to an imposing concrete vault at the far end of the hallway. You catch, finally, some snippets of conversation you recognize: “it’s coming”; “who will it get first?”

Rubbing your eyes, you see that a small crowd is huddled around the vault with all kinds of tools. You muster some courage and walk down to investigate. More obscure chatter hits you from all directions as you walk, from strange and familiar tongues. What’s coming? you wonder. Is this an emergency?

You get to the end. The entire maintenance crew is there, working away at the vault with jackhammers and hand-chisels and a blowtorch. The concierge is there, too – so is the doorman, and the bellboy, and the valet, and the fitness trainer. Several conversations are going on at once; none of it is intelligible over the noise. 

You gesture toward the door and ask, in your halting attempt at the local tongue, what’s going on. You get sideways glances and cold shoulders from the crew until the concierge steps in and offers to translate. You begin:

“What are you doing to that door?”

“We’re opening it.”

“But what’s on the other side?”

“Something dreadful; truly gruesome. When we breach this door, a beast that lives on the other side will be loosed.”

“What will it do?”

“Oh, it will be a bloodbath, sir. Guests will be slaughtered in their beds. Joists will be ripped from the walls. The hotel itself will be a mound of rubble in mere minutes. We’ll be lucky if any of us make it out alive.”

“Why are you opening it?”

At this, you get a blank stare. You’ve made a dreadful faux pas; announced your philistine Americanness. Still, you need some clarity. You ask again. The concierge responds a little indignantly: 

“Sir, why aren’t you opening the door?” 

Baffled, tired, and horribly out of your depth, you abandon diplomacy. You scream, curse, gesticulate wildly at the maintenance workers, who by now have made quite a dent in the concrete.

The concierge, more amused than angry, wipes the spittle you’ve sprayed him with and responds:

“Listen, sir: just above us, the 16^th floor is making significant progress breaking through the 16^th floor vault. They may break through to the 16th floor beast by daybreak.”

Your face must register your bewilderment. He clarifies: 

“How, in good conscience, sir, can we sit around, with our eldritch horror locked behind this vault, and wait for the 16^th floor to release their eldritch horror and destroy this hotel as we know it?”

II.

My parable is a little on-the-nose. I’m sure, given the title of the series, you know what I mean by “the beast behind the door.” But if I were to extend the metaphor all the way, there’d be some updates. The guests, rather than stand mutely in doorways, would have been swarming the hall, placing bets and taking odds. Hustlers would pitch deep-pocketed guests in the hotel bar about “integrating the beast into existing workflows.” Very possibly, as some guests would surely speculate, there may not even be a beast on the other side of the concrete.

At least with my own experience grappling with A.G.I., the broad strokes line up. Nobody knows what the beast looks like; nobody, except for the hustlers (who’ve never seen the beast) can put a positive spin on it. Everyone involved thinks it’s inevitable – and, therefore, desirable? — that the beast is freed. 

I believe there are people out there who truly welcome A.G.I., warts and all, who don’t also want to see civilization collapse. Transhumanists would be one group. “Post-scarcity” anti-work utopians are another. Some people are seduced by the idea of a “next step in evolution,” no matter the costs; I don’t totally blame them. I find them interesting. But they’re not the class that’s accelerating the quest for A.G.I. True A.I. boosters appear to possess, if not a double consciousness, at least a decent share of cognitive dissonance.

It’s of course possible to deeply fear an A.G.I. run amok, and still believe in the promise behind the concept. That, at any rate, is the guiding philosophy behind OpenAI (creators of DALL-E, ChatGPT, GPT-4, etc.). But we have a disparity in our stock of stories: AI promoters have built a solid canon of dystopian possibilities for A.G.I., and comparatively few visions for what A.G.I – a “new kind of mind” – could add to human civilization.

When we do hear the benefits of A.G.I., we hear variations on “automation.” Automation and its impact on labor are perennial concerns. What would this automation look like? It’s left unsaid. I’ll let ChatGPT give the canonical answer:

Does any of this sound well-defined? Unique? Note ChatGPT’s definition of A.G.I.: “a highly autonomous system that can perform any task a human can do.” 

Any task a human can do is disingenuous. That’s not at all the same thing as a new order of consciousness, a new step forward for intelligence, of the sort that makes some A.I. boosters salivate (or wring their hands). A.I. taking over existing human occupations is one thing. If that were all we were talking about with A.G.I., we could cut the conversation short and say no thank you, we’d rather have full employment (or something close to it). The promise of A.G.I., if it’s going to be worth fussing over, has to be greater than this. Any task a human can do, as far as I’m concerned, is only the baseline for recognizing whether you’ve truly got A.G.I. or just a mishmash of really good programs.

And ultimately, as I’ve heard more and more laymen claim, this cataclysmic promise of A.G.I. may just be a strategy to drum up interest. And investment. It certainly gets people talking, and writing.  

III.

“The man that invented the steam drill

Thought he was mighty fine,

But John Henry made fifteen feet;

The steam drill only made nine.“

Pete Seeger, “John Henry”

John Henry beat the steam drill. He persevered over an unfeeling machine built to replace him, through his own blood and grit.

The details of his life – even whether he was real – hardly matter. He triumphed; he became a legend. By now he’s become almost a pure archetype of human will in the face of automation.

It also cost him his life.

Strength – as in, brawn – is valued in the 21^st century. Strength wins championships and wins places in halls of fame and record books. It’s a physical signifier of an individual’s discipline and work ethic, and often of a high level of commendable self-denial. But I don’t think any person alive would put up a modern John Henry against even the most rudimentary of modern machines. The most perfect specimen of human strength wouldn’t even be a bit player in a competition between standard-issue robotics in an average factory.  We wouldn’t even consider holding up “strength” as the defining virtue of civilization. 

So instead we say we have other defining features. Intelligence and its cognitive relatives – creativity, empathy, understanding, wisdom, et. al. What we lack in our physical comparison to “the machines,” we more than make up for with these distinctly human intellectual traits.

I think this is generally true. But before this year, I also never expected to have a productive conversation with a bot. Since then, I’ve asked ChatGPT – now considered lower-grade next to newer models – to write me a Socratic dialogue, and it did – in seconds. I’ve asked it to write me a screenplay full of French puns and goofy names and obscure themes, and it did, also within seconds. I’ve asked DALL-E to draw me some pictures – and, actually, it didn’t do very well with those. But my point stands.

What sets us apart – from the vegetable/animal/mineral kingdoms, but especially from machines of our own design – has to be found in our minds. That’s our stake to specialness in the world. And now something new has arrived. It “thinks”; it “empathizes”; it “creates.” Our John Henrys are raising hammers and laughing in the face of the “new steam drills.” They’ve won a race against a machine once before. But that was a long time ago.

“John Henry hammered in the mountain

His hammer was striking fire.

But he worked so hard, he broke his poor heart.

He laid down his hammer and he died.”

Pete Seeger, “John Henry”

Sixteen days into August, I’m eleven poetry books behind the mark for the Sealey Challenge. I’ve read only five. At this point, am I really a card-carrying participant? 

Sure, I have a litany of excuses for those interested (I was traveling for five days; I’m a slow reader; things have been busy, etc., etc.). Still: it’s uncomfortable – like getting on a train with morning breath. Maybe nobody else notices, but the taste is unmissable. 

31 poetry books in 31 days was always going to be a stretch. I joined partly because I wanted to test myself. What would I prioritize? How soon would despair kick in? I like to think, everything considered, I’ve done a decent job. Having even fifteen, or ten, new poetry books finished by August 31 is better than none at all. 

Selection is harder than I expected. Books by legends and laureates are the most tempting, and likely the most rewarding, but they run long (80+ pages), and require hours of steadfast attention even for a cursory reading. By contrast, lesser-known / obscure / “minor poets” tend to run slim and read quick, to varying effect. This week – for example – I’ve put off Karl Shapiro and Robert Bly, knowing I’d never finish them in a calendar day in good conscience. And, groping around a bookshelf for the “fastest, easiest poet in sight,” I had to ask myself if this was even worth the time. The challenge seems to invite corner-cutting. 

But Nicole Sealey isn’t playing the hall monitor; nobody’s being graded. The point is to read more poetry. With that in mind, here are some quick impressions of books I likely wouldn’t have read for a while otherwise:

August 1: Bestiary by Donika Kelly

For some reason, in the 2010s, and particularly around the 2016 election, Respected Poets^TM embraced two particular fads:

1. turning the present progressive tense into nouns (“the groaning,” “the sighing,” “the breathing,” “…in the shedding…in the molting…”), and
2. focusing tractor-beams of attention on “the body.” Volumes upon volumes of poems centered on tongues, throats, ears, guts, etc. 

Bestiary is sparing with the first of these, but fully embraces the second. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Its central conceit – a bestiary, naturally – actually gets washed into the background by other, far more potent themes. This is a book about trauma. Flip the book to its physical center, and you’ll find “How to be alone,” a sizeable (disturbing, and heartbreaking) suite that moves through the long fallout of a truly revolting evil. 

For its size, this is a heavy book. 

August 2:  Voices of Lost Souls: Writings Under Divine Destiny by Malik Santiago

This was a mysterious purchase. I bought it from a street vendor after leafing through and seeing grainy iPhone screenshots sprinkled throughout. I could find very little evidence of its author online, and no information about the publisher. This was a bona fide independent release by an Amateur Poet^TM.

I won’t say much more except that I was surprised and charmed at turns, and put off at others. A few “Zionist / reptilian blood sucker” references too many for my taste. There were kernels of interest elsewhere: the outlines of a pseudo-Rastafarian, cosmic, diasporic worldview, shaped by a manic and contradictory poetic voice. 

August 8: Life & Death (Poems) by Robert Creeley

The first full book I’ve read by the Black Mountain poet. Some killer line breaks. Still processing.

August 13: Howl and Other Poems – Allen Ginsberg

As a college freshman, sitting down in Payson Library to read the title poem straight through, I was floored. That was the wild, expansive sort of poetry I wanted to write: poems full of angels and friends and cities, midnight journeys and heaven and hell and ecstasy. I was probably too swept up in new possibilities to take in how much despair is in this poem and the others in the collection. 

Suffering came through more acutely this time around. My thoughts on Ginsberg as a poet have fluctuated pretty strongly in the past, but I was surprised by the freshness of his voice. As much as poets have played with and broken poetic form in the intervening decades, it’s still astounding to see Ginsberg’s inventiveness seventy years later.

August 14: Little Pieces of Poetry: Selected Poems 1998-2019 – Garrett Buhl Robinson

A pocket-sized collection by the “Poet in the Park,” Garrett Buhl Robinson. I didn’t have the fortune to meet him in person, but Manhattanites can find him selling his books near some major landmarks. Each poem in this volume is accompanied by some charming digital art – like with Malik Santiago, the visuals add an intriguing aesthetic flourish that likely wouldn’t have been possible even with a smaller commercial press.