Norman MacCaig for National Poetry Day
Two previously unpublished Norman MacCaig poems for National Poetry Day: ‘Tourist and Landowner’ and ‘Two Men at Once’.
For the full background read Kevin Williamson from the Scottish Poetry Library here.
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Wonderful thank you for sharing; speaking as a Bodach!
Assaint (Asynt) was Norman Mc Caig spiritual home, i think as you get older you know you will never see these places physically but they are in your mind very strongly.
Also he was so perceptive, problem with Highland Scotland is that the tourist has become landowner, many of them do not even seem to live here let alone love the land and its story
there is nothing quite like a 40 mile drive o’er the vast desolate dava in the middle ae winter tae inspire wan’s creative flow
Dava moor between Grantown and Nairn/ Forres? I agree, have you been to Lochindorb where the Wolf of Badenoch hung out? Inspirational, love Norman McCaig’s poetry “Aunt Julia” one of my favourites.
I have indeed experienced the pleasure ov a long stand, rod in hand whilst fishing for pike at the great lochindorb, I did not however venture across the wattir to the wolf’s lair
Ah…yes..indeed…
Love the second poem especially, thanks.
GPT-4 writes a free-verse poem in the style of Norman MacCaig (poem and prompts attached):
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/11rigm5/gpt4_writes_a_freeverse_poem_in_the_style_of/
although the poster accepts the results are not free verse.
My question would be, so what?
@Niemand, well, that’s exactly my response when encountering most allegedly-human poetry, but I’ve been considering what primatologist Frans De Waal writes about language in Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016), a book concerning animal intelligence. The author is not that interested in animal communication, which is interesting, and writes that animals may produce apt language for human consumption, but we need to know how many times they don’t. Humans may be linguistic but then they lie all the time. Psychologists are over-credulous about what people tell them. He disputes the alleged link between cognition and language, says Consensus now follows Piaget: “cognition is independent of language” p102. Irene Pepperberg’s parrot Alex may amaze us with its linguistic performances, but body language is more of a bridge between species.
So what does this tell us about poetry (which is always technologically mediated, given that human formal languages are technology)?
Communication and understanding is not simply verbally-based but is that not blindingly obvious and we do not need any expert of any shade to tell us so? Felling can be knowing too.
Poetry takes different forms of course. The example here, for example is read aloud, others are obviously performance based, others designed solely to be read silently from the page. The first two will indeed involve other means of communication and thus understanding and knowing, the latter, something purely for the imagination – the words conjure impressions, thoughts and emotions in the mind with no other communicative distractions (which is why some might privilege the written word).
All ChatGPT knows is the cannon of previously written poetry and can make new poems modelled on that by literally reconfiguring what has already written, word after word. It is a technical exercise and not based on any desire to communicate (in any form) as ChatGPT has no desires or feelings ore emotions. I cannot see any value in it as an artistic force on its own other than as a piece of clever engineering.
@Niemand, but perhaps it is a human bias to mistake language for intelligence? That is a basis for criticising such applications of the Turing Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test#Weaknesses
Someone in another recent article said we need systems thinking to address our most pressing problems. I agree. I would suggest that poetry is almost the antithesis of systems thinking. I don’t see any depth in these poems by Norman MacCaig (perhaps there was a reason they were never published).
Perhaps you are expecting too much from poetry, and people making claims about its ability to address ‘pressing problems’ are deluded? Anyone who is really serious about changing the world does not become a poet or any kind of artist; they do something that can actually bring about material change directly.
I listened to the second MacCaig poem and liked its simple reflection on memory and ageing. Its language is plain, banal even until the end where the metaphor of ‘cutting the pack of memories and turning up ace after ace after ace’ hits home. Or it did for me.
A fair bit of art is about everyday things described in ways that throw now light on everydayness or even just express it in ways that delight (and thus bring profundity). I value this kind of art above all (and I included prose writing in this, even some academic writing can do this) because the fact of the matter is, most of our lives is spent doing and thinking mundane things, over and over.
@Niemand, perhaps, but my point here was about human susceptibility to The Word. Perhaps instead of Homo Sapiens we should be called Homo Credens? Not just poetry, but patter and patronage, political promises and polite paraphrasings. Our credulity makes us easy to indoctrinate. Repeatedly.
I watched a couple of programmes recently featuring the same anti-extremist USAmerican veteran activist, who had been through military indoctrination then disillusionment, then right-wing extremism indoctrination, then disillusionment, openly claiming to have made the same mistake at least twice. Our vulnerability to authoritative adults making confident pronouncements is perhaps what sets our species apart from the rest of the living planet.
Although apparently other primates can lie too, faking ‘snake/raptor’ warnings to distract threatening group members. They can cry wolf, too.
If you are saying that poetry can manipulate your mood, this is not a light matter. If you were told that the two poems in the above video were AI-generated and the GPT-link ones were the discovered, unpublished poems, what would be your reaction? And how true is this picture of old age, when the world’s greatest nuclear terror state appears to be a gerontocracy?
DSL didn’t have ‘botach’, so I suppose it is the Gaelic for ‘serf’: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bodach#Scottish_Gaelic
Which is quite misleading even in Scottish culture, with its patriarchy and cult of the poet still going strong.
A lot has been said about Art, but if Art is a lie that sells another lie, what should our defences against Art be?
Yeah but language is part of humanity so lying, deception and being misled are simply part of it. There is no escaping our evolution, the word is here to stay and we have to deal with it. Just because language is capable of leading people down very bad paths does not mean the opposite is not also true.
To me ChatGPT is the lie. Yes anyone could be fooled by it and another way of putting that is they were deceived, lied to. The reason I thought these poems genuine is that it is an archive recording of him saying his poems, but yes it could all be faked, one can no longer trust anything that is not in person any more. This is the real problem, not poets and artists ‘lying’ by using artistic license to try and express something more deeply and manipulating your emotions (something that all artists of any form and ilk have always done and that audiences understand as part of the delight of it).
So I do not understand why the focus is on people creating art rather than on the real deceiver and threat to truth and even reality – the total, often hidden fakery of totally parasitic AI ‘art’ (and much worse of course as AI images start to change the entire course of elections as has been seen recently in the US).
hmm, how’s about havn a poetic voice, i.e., as close an approximation to your own personal way of thought, speech, action, particular locale, landscape, weather, what’s going on at that particular moment ansoan, can AI recreate that? NO IT CANNOT. now, as far as festivities, creative writing degrees, educational and political discourse that attempts to recruit writers of literary art to its cause, do the actual creators, i.e., makers of this art get paid, do they fuck, or if they do at all, it is in peanuts, unless ov course they accept one of these silly invitations to read in front of an audience, essentially all that is, is some intruder chapping your door and insisting you go for a sesh when you are stoney broke and trying to get your book finished, how many of these sanctioned by the scottish government university theses cunningly disguised as a work of literary genius do we actually need before we realise that any ‘nationalised/standardised textual form or language is a weapon against oneself and everyone else, whereas keeping oneself locked away doing the actual thing if funded correctly by somebody who knows what the fk they are talking about is the correct way by which to proceed
Sin thu fhèin a bhalaich, well said Niemand
not sure why my last comment didn’t make it into the language debate, no doubt the touts that control from the waist up consider my contribution outwith their bourgoise elite establishment view that writings must be neatly categorized, so where does the ability to creat new texts begin, and should we not spare a thocht for the inglick language. the rarest of fisher forms from the inglick past, far the licking ov the stamp was a very important custom indeed.
shaky’s takin doun,
wild een wear yon froun,
til’ they send the photaes back,
bard’s ay paint in black