Let’s Get Real | Poetry

Warms Your Heart, Now You Bloom

And how ChatGPT failed my nonet test

She stirs from slumber to greet the day The air piqued crisp a sweet bouquet Petals kissed by morning dew* Here she waits just for you Feel her poetry It draws you in Warms your heart Now you Bloom

© Carolyn Hastings 2023

Of course, this nonet really only makes sense if you read it in conjunction with the header image.

And — if you don’t mind me saying — Wow! what an image it is! 🤩 I took the photo last October and knew then that one day I would have reason to use it for a poem.

The opportunity presented itself when I read Maternal Love Blooms, a poem generated by ChatGPT for Paper Poetry’s Let’s Get Real prompt. Of note, it was the first line of the poem’s fourth stanza, ‘Like petals kissed by morning dew’, that had me scrolling through my photo library in search of the dewy, bejewelled rose. You’ll see that I’ve borrowed that line for line 3 of my nonet (marked with *).

Putting ChatGPT to the Nonet Test

I chose to write a nonet because I felt sure ChatGPT would struggle with this form of shape poetry; plus the whole point of Paper Poetry’s May prompt is to show the world what humans can do with poetry that the chatbot can’t.

To test my theory, I asked ChatGPT to complete some nonet tasks.

Task #1: Define ‘nonet’

Comment: ChatGPT — nice work with the definition, although I think your observation that nonets ‘can be an interesting and challenging form to work with’ is odd — where did you get that idea from? 🤔

Task #2: Write a nonet

Comment: ChatGPT — you’re a complete doofus! 😜 You talk about a nonet being a nine-line poem decreasing incrementally by one syllable from a nine-syllable line to a one-syllable line and then you give me a 10-line poem with a syllable-line profile: 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. 🤷 Erh, were you talking about yourself when you said nonets can be challenging?! 🙄

Task #3: Write a nonet about flowers

Comment: ChatGPT — are you messing with me? I see what you’re doing. You stuffed up your first nonet, so you’ve switched to a generic definition of nonet (any poem with nine lines), served up nine lines with eight or nine syllables each, and tossed in bonus end rhyme and smatterings of iambic meter as extra sweeteners! 😜 Sorry, moving the goalposts without notice to suit yourself is not on — neither is bribing the umpire! Into the sin bin you go! 😅

Conclusion

Thinking about this latest run-in with ChatGPT, I realise we humans have contributed to the confusion by having both broad and narrow meanings of the word, nonet.

Nonet literally means a group of nine whatevers. For example, the music industry uses the word to refer to an ensemble of nine performers; Sudoku players use the word to describe the 3x3 blocks within the larger 9x9 grid; while contemporary poets have niched it into a form with a specific syllabic structure.

When I asked ChatGPT to define a nonet, it went straight to the specific poetic form. This was probably because it took into account our previous conversations which have all been about different forms of poetry.

What this exercise has shown me is that, despite knowing a nonet is a type of shape poem, ChatGPT doesn’t know how to write one! 😜

And, for this human, who values real poetry over bot poetry, that’s exactly how I hope it remains. 😊

Let’s Get Real

As mentioned earlier, I’ve written this piece for Paper Poetry’s Let’s Get Real prompt where we’re using words from a ChatGPT-generated poem to create a poem that only a human can write. In recognition of May being the month of Mother’s Day and seasonal flowers, the themes focus on all things maternal and floral. The prompt runs through to the end of the month. You can learn more about it here —

Douglas Lim joined the prompt with a personal reflection about his mother in Mother’s Day Week Brings Something Unexpected —

Lilie Kaizen assesses herself as a mother of two lil’ ones, and asks us to consider, Do you ‘believe’ or be+live’ your dreams? —

Confession Time

I confess to having broken the prompt guidelines by exceeding the maximum-two-image rule for this story. I did so in the belief there is educational value in sharing our interactions with ChatGPT and its bitty botty buddies.

On that score, I’ve created a list of stories I’ve written that address issues to do with bot poetry —

Thank you so much for reading. 🙏 💕

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