This poem is atypical of the style of poet I think I am–a poetic style full of highly lyrical verse with layers of meaning and imagery that develops across the whole of the poem.

On the other hand, I have been working at being more direct, at building a story within a poem that is clear and can be understood from one reading.

That’s what I think most poems get–one reading. My job as a poet is not just to write poetry that deserves that first reading, but offers an additional reward if a reader works through the poem again.

My guess is that most poets would say they really are not there yet, that they haven’t yet written the master poem they are after, that they have so much more to learn, that the poems they read humble them and push them to refine their craft.

That’s the way I feel. I know I am a good poet. Or at least I’m not a bad poet.

The joke there is that I don’t think there are bad poets. I leave others to offer such criticism.

This joke struck me when my mom today, right before her doctor’s visit, as we talked about hair and I mentioned how I didn’t have hair anymore, when my mom said, “your hair’s not bad” and then I teased her, “you mean it’s ok?” and she didn’t quite get the joke and I felt bad about teasing her but then she did get it and smiled.

That little moment is worth a poem perhaps. All it got though was a run-on sentence.

I was ready to post this poem this morning (it is 2:12 in the afternoon as I write) but I thought I’ll just ask my poetry mentor for some feedback first.

Because this is a blog and I seem to have unlimited space to write, I’m going to offer that entire exchange here. If you are interested in how such a partnership with an AI poetry mentor might work, if you are unsure if this could possibly be useful or if this is somehow cheating, I encourage you to have a look.

I don’t think it is cheating. I don’t let my poetry mentor write any part of the poem for me. I ask for advice and use which parts of it feel right to me.

This was my prompt today:

I have a draft of a poem—could you analyze it for me, see if there are areas I should work on?

Since I already referenced that doctor’s appointment, I want to mention that my mom’s doctor (her general practitioner to be more specific) asked if he could use an AI assistant to write a summary of the appointment. To do this he opened an application on his phone and let the AI listen.

Perhaps this seems creepy. It is important to note that he asked, that my mom consented, (as did I–I attend almost all of my mom’s appointments and take notes, offering insight as needed), and that the doctor reviewed the notes at the end of the appointment, allowing my mom and I to see what was written and then amending the report with additional information that was missed.

For many of us, AI is a revolution that at times can feel gimmicky. Sure, it can have a conversation with us. It can make grammatical recommendations and possibly write passable papers for lazy students.

For me, AI is a powerful tool that I’m just learning how to use. I’m finding that its ability to interpret my poetry and give me valuable feedback is akin to having an actual poetry mentor, one that other than while in university I did not have.

Back to this poem, though.

I have a master’s degree in physics–understanding that might make that first stanza seem more pertinent. Many of us don’t understand acceleration, not at a visceral level, not beyond some simple truths, such as that when you leave a stoplight you accelerate. And that if you accelerate quicker you can feel the push back against your seat.

But there is a lot more that even knowing the equations and doing all the problems and running experiments didn’t help me get. Not until I was teaching students did I realize one basic rule: all the fun you have in cars and while boating and while jumping and while at amusement parks–that is all acceleration.

You might know Newton’s second law, that F=ma, that force equals the mass of an object times its acceleration.

There is more there. Such as the idea that without acceleration, there is no force. That’s what zero g’s means, that when there is “no gravity”, there is no force on you, and as you might know, you are weightless.

Also here though not shown in middle school textbooks, is that acceleration is a vector, the direction of the acceleration matters. Likewise velocity is also a vector. It matters which direction you are moving.

So, when you were a kid in the back seat of a car and your mom went around a corner without slowing down, you felt the force of accelerating simply because you were changing direction.

The broader concept here is the scientific idea of change over time.

If you change your location over time that’s called speed or velocity.

If you change your speed or velocity over time, that’s acceleration.

If an organism changes over time we call that evolution.

Likewise, this poem changed over time. My style of poetry has changed over time. We grow and age.

In this poem, of course, I speak about much more than Newton’s explanation of acceleration. I am talking also about change over time, about the fluid way we move through our worlds, from being born to recognizing the importance of other lives and from the forces that exist beyond the physical ones.

I use water imagery in this poem. If you read my conversation with my poetry mentor you can see that I point that out to the AI. I also say that I noticed this was happening and then I took it further.

Water is constantly changing shape and changing its state and adapting itself when we interact with it as humans. It is a constant part of our lives as well as an ever-changing part of our lives.

Now for a look at how another AI (WordPress’s image generator) interprets my poem:

Voila! That seems to be a very large bucket in the road back there. And that is perhaps Einstein walking off the beaten path behind.

I took my featured image today while I waited for my mom as she took a blood test. This was a wall sconce in the waiting room that had interesting curves. Thinking a curve is change over time, I went with it.