Saturday, April 29, 2023

Spring Festival Reader Photos/Julian Randall Reciting/"Living" With Artificial Intelligence/Save The Date/Two Ed Coletti Poems?


The Real Deal - Julian Randall - Among Today's Most Powerful Poets - Recites                "Grief"

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Photos From Our March 26th Spring Festival Event at Cafe Frida Gallery

Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Carl Macki
Ed Coletti
Pamela Singer
Hilary Moore
Pat Nolan
Gail King
Rob DeLillo
Avotcja
Steve Shain

and now Save the Date for the Upcoming Sizzling Summer Reading Please put the Next Cafe Frida/Ed Coletti Poetry Festival Event on your Calendar. It will occur on Sunday June 25, 2023 from 1-3PM featuring 

  • Terry Ehret
  • David Beckman
  • Sandra Anfang
  • David Madgalene
  • Phyllis Meshalum
  • Jodi Hottel
  • Steve Shane soloing on his magic bass
  • Richard Long (editor of 2 River Review)
  • Raphael Block (sharing from his new book)

Cafe Frida Gallery is located in the Santa Rosa Art District at  300 S A St, Santa Rosa, CA 95401.  Should you wish to do so, feel free to catch the earlier music and lunch at the café. 

My Brief Counterphobic Flirtation With Chat GPT



Dear Friends,

I am writing this letter in collaboration with Chat Gpt. It is an experiment. I want the letter to be written in the style of Kazuo Ishiguro who won the Academy Award as screenwriter of "Living" for which the great Bill Nighy was nominated as Best Actor. Joyce and I watched it recently. It now has become my favorite of the Oscar nominees from this past year. I'd say Banshees of Innesherin is a close second.  

I've asked chat gpt not to describe Ishiguro's style but to write this letter IN that style. However, Chat GPT "chose" to spend at least half of its effort on third person narrative description of Ishiguro and his methods. Having reread the text, I've noticed that CG (ChatGpt) does in fact quickly get into the first person and assumes something like the style of Ishiguro. Therefore, for my purposes here, I will drop the more process oriented travels through my half-day of "discussion" with CG and my attempts to convince it to do things in my way. I especially am pleased with the final seven "stanzas" of this missive. The italics are my own. 

But, wait! I now realize that those final lines of the "letteer"are in large measure identical to the opening lines. Thus, I once again am mindful of Eliot's prophetic Four Quartets and especially in Little Gidding, 

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

(CG) And yet, we persist in our efforts to capture the fleeting moments of our lives, to pin them down onto the page, as if by doing so we might somehow make sense of them. It is a curious impulse, one that I have long struggled to understand.  Ed 

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(ChatGpt) As I sit down to respond to your request, I am struck by the weight of memory that seems to accompany every keystroke. Forgive me, if my words are tinged with a certain wistfulness, for I find that nostalgia has a way of coloring even the most mundane of tasks.

You asked me to write, and so I shall endeavor to do so, though I cannot help but wonder whether the act of writing itself is not an exercise in futility. After all, what is a mere string of words in the face of the vastness of human experience? What can a story, a poem, or a novel hope to achieve in a world so full of noise and confusion?
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(Ed) Although the preceding passage is stylistic,  I've only been marginally successful with the style vs substance issue. With AI, at least in the deleted sections of this experiment, substance has triumphed, and this makes sense since substance is quantitative , with style being almost entirely qualitative. So now, I'm going to try to force chatgpt to err toward writing the rest of this in the style of Ishiguro.  I'm also planning to ask it to portray a discussion between Nighy's character Rodney Williams and his new young friend Miss Margaret Harris in the movie "Living". We'll see what he can glean from other than my input. (Now, this also could lead me into a future discussion of plagiarism since ChatGpt does not appear to be very "interested" in ascriptions at this point in its development.)


Here is a very brief example of CG's now stricken third person narrative,  (CG) "In many of Ishiguro's novels, the relationships between characters are often characterized by a sense of distance or disconnection. This can be seen in works such as "Never Let Me Go" and "The Remains of the Day," where the central characters struggle with their own emotional barriers and struggle to connect with others." I persisted in telling AI to write the following in the style of Ishiguro. It responded immediately and before I had a chance to insert the passage. The response was the dramatically stylistic one which follows:

And yet, we persist in our efforts to capture the fleeting moments of our lives, to pin them down onto the page, as if by doing so we might somehow make sense of them. 

As I sit down to respond to your request, I am struck by the weight of memory that seems to accompany every keystroke. 

 Forgive me, if my words are tinged with a certain wistfulness, for I find that nostalgia has a way of coloring even the most mundane of tasks.

You asked me to write, and so I shall endeavor to do so, though I cannot help but wonder whether the act of writing itself is not an exercise in futility. 

After all, what is a mere string of words in the face of the vastness of human experience? 

What can a story, a poem, or a novel hope to achieve in a world so full of noise and confusion?


It is a curious impulse, one that I have long struggled to understand. Perhaps it is because we are mortal, and we know that our time on this earth is limited. Perhaps it is because we are afraid, and we hope that by telling stories we might be able to keep the darkness at bay. Or perhaps it is simply because we are human, and it is in our nature to create, to imagine, to dream.

Whatever the reason, I find myself drawn to the act of writing, even as I question its worth. For there is something cathartic in the process of putting pen to paper, of allowing the words to flow from my mind onto the page.

And so I write, not because I believe that my words will change the world, but because they are a part of who I am. They are the echoes of a life lived, the whispers of a soul trying to make sense of the world around it.

I write, and I hope that in doing so, I might be able to capture something of the human experience, something that might resonate with others and make them feel a little less alone in this vast and bewildering world.


(Ed) 



I tire and will now re-tire. Here I am writing only as the mere Ed Coletti. The process has been a long but enjoyable (perhaps an addicting) one. I will certainly be back at it! For now, enough!


Cheers from,


The Ed Coletti I still believe myself to be
               

               

 

Two Poems by Ed Coletti

Time Travel On a Bicycle
Nothing much about the forty-six years since
I lived in that little Marin town of Fairfax
I visited today with a friend and
could not even begin to fathom
the sheer bulk of time so encompassed
while the space of the town remained as
it had been then where only time had changed
along with me at 72 no longer 26
riding my 10-speed high frame Raleigh
across Broadway at Bolinas
on to other pretty tiny towns
Larkspur Mill Valley Sausalito
over the Golden Gate
into vaporous San Francisco on Lombard
to Gough Street to  fly down Bush
into the city’s heart its Tenderloin
Union Square and back once again
through its Presidio and Fort Point
that glorious autumn rust of a bridge
back into the early Seventies
warmth
.            that was the County of Marin.

El Pequeño Valle
Ellie taking a crack at getting in touch
Big birds squawking at sunup
Nothing as elusive to Ellie as Ellie.
Patas monkey screech, river echoing,
She scratches the diminutive valley
Between right hip and rib.

Crocodiles in slow race glide.
Ellie’s single fingers part and press
While, with spoonbills daintily hovering,

Ellie trying, gives it all she’s got.
And softly rocking herself in place
Ellie’s got quite a bit going for herself,

Floating down the Rio Negro accompanied
By howler monkey’s ominous baying
Ellie rubbing awake that seldom recalled

Little valley of sensitivity above her hip
Beneath her bottom rib on the right side
Just then as a tropical sun surmounts

The Nicaraguan horizon’s growing blaze
Igniting, oh this brilliant morning conflagration
Of major minor undiminished tropical birds,

She shouts with the fledgling sun
Then listens to the Rio Negro’s whisper.
Todo es bien aqui donde el rio le susurra.

 

About the Poet
Ed Coletti is a poet, painter, fiction writer and middling chess player. Previously,he served for three years as an Army Officer, then as a Counselor, college instructor, and later as a Small Business Consultant. Recent poems  have appeared in ZYZZYVANorth American Review, Volt, Spillway, and Blueline.  Most recent poetry collections include The Problem With Breathing (Edwin Smith Publishing –Little Rock- 2015) and Apollo Blue’s Harp And The Gods Of Song published by McCaa Books February 2019.  Ed also curates the popular ten-year-old blog “No Money In Poetry”  http://edwardcolettispoetryblog.blogspot.com/ He lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa, California where they lost their home during the October 2017 firestorm.  The Coletti’s are pleased to report that they happily have relocated elsewhere in Santa Rosa.


       



 

 

4 comments:

Raphael Block said...

Thanks very much, Ed, for the link to Julian Randall's powerful recitation of "Grief."

And for inviting me to such a wonderful gathering of poets on June 25th!

Joe Zaccardi said...

I enjoyed No Money in Poetry post; especially your poems “Time Travel On a Bicycle,” El Pequeno Valle,” and your tribute to michael rothenberg.

That’s quite the line-up of nine poets scheduled for June 25th.

Ciao my friend in Poetry, Joe

Hilary Moore said...

Grief. SO many phrases to mind, to keep, to wish were not true!

If this doesn’t make you weep, I don’t know what will,

and I don’t know how/who/when change will be the news.

thank you Ed, for sharing this.
Hilary

Joe Zaccardi said...

Afternoon Ed,

I really admire Julian Randell’s reading of his poem “Grief.” His voice is both strong and steady, kind of like a helmsman in a storm.

Also enjoyed the collaboration between you and Chat Gpt. Fascinating.

And, of course your two poems “Time Travel On a Bicycle,” is great. I think I heard this poem before or perhaps read it somewhere. As to “El Pequeno Valle,” bravo!.

Ciao, Joe

Rare Footage of Jack Micheline Reading/A.D. Winans/Photos from Festival of The Long Poem/ Coletti Works/ Etc.

Jack Micheline and Al Winans (right to left in this cool painting by Jason Hardung) click for  Jack Micheline Reading A. D. Winans Remembers...