This AI-powered poem was first published by the Asian American Writers' Workshop in their Zuihitsu special issue, and is part of COMPLETION POEMS, an ongoing series begun in 2018 with my alter ego, Technelegy, a custom-trained version of a language model that uses machine learning to create original, human-sounding verse. Our writing process often begins with compiling a data set that reflects specific information and inspiration, focusing the system's poetic mind via lists of sample inputs and completions. Then I prompt my co-author with “seed” words and phrases that trigger responses which in turn become new prompts, and so on. The resulting outputs are a kind of cybernetic zuihitsu - each thought directly eliciting the next, styles and forms shifting without warning to create a cascade of words tethered by algorithmic associations, semantic patterns and augmented imagination.
In this version of the poem, I have used the recursive technique explored throughout my REPETAE series to investigate resonances between linguistic pattern recognition and poetic repetition, and to embody the polyphony (or cacophony) of AI authorship, as well as the uncanny yet deeply familiar feeling of collaborating with a more-than-human mind. The term "broadside" refers to a method of printing and distribution that became popular after the invention of moveable type in the 1400s, and posits the literary use case of blockchain as next-gen printing press.