A little over a year ago OpenAI introduced GPTs:
We’re rolling out custom versions of ChatGPT that you can create for a specific purpose—called GPTs. GPTs are a new way for anyone to create a tailored version of ChatGPT to be more helpful in their daily life, at specific tasks, at work, or at home—and then share that creation with others. For example, GPTs can help you learn the rules to any board game, help teach your kids math, or design stickers.
Anyone can easily build their own GPT—no coding is required. You can make them for yourself, just for your company’s internal use, or for everyone.
In the last few months Paul Fishwick got together with poet Fred Turner and created a GPT based on Fred’s poetry: FredTheHeretic (FTH). You give it a prompt and it gives you a poem based on that prompt. I’ve appended three such poems, along with the prompts I gave it. As always, my prompt is boldfaced.
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Via Augustine: The Labyrinth of Memory
Create a poem based on the following passage from St. Augustine:
The power of memory is prodigious, my God. It is a vast immeasurable sanctuary. Who can plumb its depths? And yet it is a faculty of my soul. Although it is part of my nature, I cannot understand all that I am. This means, then, that the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. But where is that part of it which it does not itself contain? Is it somewhere outside itself and not within it? How, then, can it be part of it, if it is not contained in it?
Here is a poem inspired by St. Augustine's reflection on memory:
A vast cathedral echoes in the mind,
Its corridors both sunlit and obscure.
Here, vaults of thought and chambers intertwine,
Yet none can map its halls, none feel secure.
What architect has wrought this endless maze?
This holy depth that cannot self-contain?
Though crafted by the soul’s eternal blaze,
Its darkest wings defy its own domain.
Are we the gate, the keeper, or the door?
The mind’s eye scans itself, yet turns to doubt:
The part not held within must rest elsewhere,
But where, if not within? And where without?
Each thought a whisper from a distant shrine,
Each shrine a mystery of fire and stone.
We are too vast for limits to define,
Yet ever seeking limits to be known.
What holy paradox our being seems,
The housed and homeless mingled in our dreams.
Via Burton: The Character of Mortality
Give me a poem based on this passage from Anatomy of Melancholy:
Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or habit. In disposition, is that transitory melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causeth anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions, no man living is free, no stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well composed, but more or less, some time or other he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality.
Beneath the world’s bright, bustling veneer,
The shadow lingers, sharp and near—
A flicker in laughter, a crease in cheer,
That specter of sadness we all must bear.
At times, it comes like a thief at night,
Unbidden, quiet, beyond our sight.
The sigh of failure, the taste of grief,
The moments that mock our vain belief.
No fortress of wisdom, no well-set plan,
No stoic, nor saint, nor the luckiest man,
Can escape the touch of this human plight,
That binds us together in shadow and light.
For in the weight of the heart’s dark ache,
There is a rhythm no joy can fake.
We walk with it, stumble, and rise again,
The character of mortality, joy’s twin.
This constant ebb of the soul’s tides turning,
Melancholy’s glow, both searing and yearning.
To live is to linger in light and shade—
A journey where sorrow and mirth are made.
Via Hollander: The Dance of Silent Meaning
Create a poem based on this one by John Hollander, which he created as a tribute to Noam Chomsky:
Curiously deep, the slumber of crimson thoughts:
While breathless, in stodgy viridian,
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Here’s a poem inspired by John Hollander’s tribute to Noam Chomsky, blending thematic homage with my poetic sensibility:
Beneath a sable moon, strange echoes breathe—
A latticework of absence, bright with fire,
Unspoken words thread veils of trembling air,
Soundless, yet roaring through the mind’s deep choir.
A crimson thought unfurls, enraged yet calm,
Its sleep a paradox of soft alarms;
Through midnight roots, green whispers writhe and swell,
Their fury cradled in night's quiet arms.
This place of thought is no mere void of speech—
It churns with movements alien, unseen.
Here, colors burn in silent symphony:
Where furious green ideas sleep, serene.
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