First, the obvious question:
Why use AI to help you write poetry?
For me, the part of my mind that does structure, rhyme, meter, etc. is very different that the part that expresses my feelings. I have strong feelings, perspectives, and narrative ability, but I’ve never put that into poetry because the moment the question “what does that rhyme with?” comes up, I just to a different headspace than the story or feelings I want to express and my flow state ends.
Enter ChatGPT. While playing around with AI tools, I discovered the AI could produce exceptional poetry. While the AI could quickly produce poetry that rhymed and had the right structure and meter, it often expressed unoriginal ideas and cliches. However, AI had all the skills I lacked. While I had original ideas, experiences, and feelings, I would take an hour to come up with a good rhyme, while it generated many in seconds. When the two of our halves combined, we formed the skills of a full poet.
What Can AI Do (And Not Do)?
AI can generate poetry quickly that follows all the rules of poetry. It can rhyme or not. It can ape the style of famous and prolific poets. AI can generate lots of poems and ideas very quickly. AI can take your ideas and put them into poetic structure.
What AI can NOT do is have original thoughts. You have to supply those. AI can only draw from the collective input of all humans who have contributed to its dataset. If you have a new idea or perspective, you have to articulate it first. The joke I have is: AI has no soul, so you have to give it yours. However, if you pour your soul into the prompt the same way any artist puts their soul into the art, it will help you.
How To Write Poetry With AI
1. Select A Style
AI is very good at following rules. If you give it a structure, it will follow it. For this reason, I like to use styles that have defined rules, such as iambic pentameter, sonnet, haiku, etc. While I know it’s very fashionable to —
write poetry like this where if you just space the lines it becomes p o e t ry
— that isn’t what I personally enjoy and I don’t know how to evaluate it. For me, the structure of more traditional forms of poetry let’s me know that I am indeed writing poetry with the AI and not just BS-ing myself. Maybe, that’s a crutch, but it’s also the kind of poetry I enjoy.
I like writing in iambic pentameter in particular because that form allows for the most flexibility while offering the clearest and most stringent rules. Shakespeare is written in iambic pentameter and if you write in Shakespearian style people find that impressive, even though it is actually easy and even easier if you have a machine helping you.
Quick break - I want to address a limiting mindset before continuing this article:
It’s Okay For This To Be Easy
There is this idea that artists must “suffer” in order to produce good art. This ties into the “labor theory of value” and the idea the value of something is based on how much labor someone put into it. I do not believe that at all.
There is no correlation between suffering and value to humans. I’ve suffered. It didn’t make me an artist. Making art did. I’ve also had projects I worked extremely hard on accomplish little, while other projects came effortlessly and produced great results. What makes art valuable is it’s impact on humans. If we can make something in two seconds with AI that moves humans, then it is art. If someone thinks they need to suffer to produce art, go ahead, but I am perfectly happy to make suffering-free art.
Okay, back to the process…
2. Write A Prompt
There are no rules here. This is just what I do. However, most prompts I used for AI poetry follow roughly this structure:
Write a [type of poem] in [style] about [subject, point-of-view] that says [details]
There it is. That’s your formula. If you want to do this yourself, write that down. Copy it and fill it out like a mad-lib.
Let’s go through each of those:
Type of poem: Certain poem types will tell you the structure, like haiku or sonnet. If you are using one of these, you may not need the style section. You might also add an adjective like “Shakespearian,” “gothic,” “modern,” etc. to indicate what type of language you want it to use. If you want your poem to rhyme, you might say “rhyming” here, but I usually put that in the style section.
Style: Style could be the construction of the poem (ex: "rhyming iambic pentameter”). It could also be a famous poet (“in the style of Walt Whitman / Emily Dickenson”). If you have a specific rhyme scheme you could put that here.
Subject: Pretty self-explanatory. What is your poem about? Write your story or subject here. Ex: “about a breakup between two clowns,” “about the time my dog died,” “about how I can’t get you out of my mind,” etc. Most people understand this part, but you can elevate it with…
Point-of-view: Whose perspective is this poem from? The default most poets go to is themselves, but if you’re telling a story this can be interesting. For example, if we took the previous subject example “about how I can’t get you out of my mind” as our prompt, we’ll get a different poem if we add “from the perspective of a groom whose bride has died” than if we get “from the perspective of a man being stalked by his psychic ex.”
This is especially good if you want to understand another’s perspective. If writing a poem about a conflict you were involved in, try writing the poem from the perspective of the person causing you problems. Writing “you were a bad mom - the poem” is fairly straightforward. Writing a poem from the perspective of an abusive mother lamenting “why don’t you call me anymore? I gave everything to you. What did I do wrong?” that subtly hints at the real truth of their relationship is more interesting. If you can’t relate to the other side - well, AI can help.
The last part is details. This is where you…
3. Pour Your Soul Into The AI
I’m serious. If you do this part right, it should look like you’re having a mental breakdown in the prompt command. Write everything you want this poem to say and everything that you’re feeling.
If you just write “write me a poem about [x]” then the AI will indeed write you a poem. It might even be a good poem. But it won’t be your poem. When people say that AI art lacks “soul” this is what they are talking about. As we said earlier: AI has no soul so your have to give it yours. Pour your soul out into that chat line. This is the secret sauce that separates the art from the content.
When I’m done doing this, I’ll usually have a full paragraph in the command line. If I know the order I want these sections to come in, I’ll say “then say this” or “finish the poem by asking this.” I’ll often include specific images or metaphors I want it to use (“use [x] as a metaphore for [y]” - more on this technique here). Everything goes here. Go crazy. Then hit enter.
Congrats! Now you have a poem. Except, it probably isn’t exactly what you want. That’s why you have to…
4. Beat It With A Stick Until It Does What You Want
If you are writing from the soul, then AI is a very useful tool for helping that soul find structure and rhyme. It may even have discovered some useful lines and ideas you might otherwise have thought of. However, there are likely differences between what the AI created and what you want.
Like any good writer, we want to get the first draft out as fast as possible and then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. The AI takes no time to write. You can beat it with a stick and make it rewrite as much as you want. I say “beat it with a stick” because the AI cannot take notes as a human would. If you ask it to rewrite carefully. It might rewrite your poem in a completely different rhyme scheme or style if you don’t specify exactly what you want it to keep as well as what you want it to change.
When I prompt a rewrite I’ll be specific. “Write a new section in the same style of rhyming iambic pentameter that says…” or “rewrite the poem in the sonnet style, but remove all references to [x], and instead talk about… etc.” Often I will generate 10 pages of poems and then Frankenstein the best parts together - which is why it is important to get a consistent style. Fortunately, if you do this, you can throw your finished poem into the AI and ask “does this work?” and it will tell you if you broke your structure or some parts don’t have the same style as others.
I’ve found that AI (or at least ChatGPT) will often tell you exactly the point you wanted it to make. “I feel like I will never get love again, because…” I often delete the first and last paragraph of poems it gives me because this is where it put the “on the nose” storytelling. Just jump into the story and the audience will figure it out.
Another break. I want to tell you that it’s okay to…
Use The AI To Explore
Some poems, I know what I want. Others, I don’t. It’s okay to put absolute nonsense in the prompt and try weird ideas to see what the AI does. Some of my best AI-assisted work has come from this.
For example, you might try the prompt “write a poem that uses a flamethrower as a metaphor for relationships.” How are flamethrowers a metaphor for relationships? I have no idea! But I kind of wanted to see what the AI would do with that. It came back with this:
A flamethrower in hand, I venture forth With passion burning bright, my love a torch I spray my flames, a reckless, wild desire Consuming all in its relentless fire But in the heat of passion, I forget The danger that my flames can truly wreak I scorch the earth and singe the tender green Leaving nothing but ash and a bitter scene So now I learn to wield my weapon well With caution and control, I'll ring the bell For love is not a flame to be let loose But a fire to be tended, with care and use So let us ignite, but with a steady hand And let our love forever be a brand That burns with warmth and light, not with destruction A flame that brings love, not bitter eruption.
That’s interesting. Now we have a poem about how someone enjoyed their passion so much, they sprayed it everywhere, but hurt others, and now they’ve learned to use their passions more carefully. I wouldn’t have thought of that. If you gave a human the same prompt - “write a poem that uses a flamethrower as a metaphor for relationships” - I’ll bet every person would do something different.
There are a lot of places I could go from that. If I was developing that, I might try 30 different metaphors for relationships with the AI. Or I might say “rewrite the poem. Make it still use a flamethrower as a metaphor for relationships, but be from the perspective of someone who was very careful, containing their flame to a candle, hiding their light, but now let’s themselves be fully self-expressed as much as a flamethrower. Make a reference to the church song “this little light of mine, I’m gonna let is shine.”” Now, we’d have a totally different poem - but one that wouldn’t exist without the inspiration of the first.
If you want to see the rewrite it gave me from that prompt:
I held my flame close, like a candle's light Hiding my passion, out of fear and fright But now I've learned to let it burn so bright Like a flamethrower, I'll ignite For love is not a thing to be concealed But a fire to be fully self-revealed I'll let my light shine, just like the song For this little flame of mine, has been too long I'll let it burn wild and free, with no regret For love is a flamethrower, not a net That catches and constrains, but a force that empowers A light that illuminates the darkest hours So let us ignite, with all we are And let our love forever be a star That burns with warmth and light, not with destruction A flame that brings love, not bitter eruption.
That’s different. Is it there yet? Maybe. You decide. Play around. Try lots of stuff. You can page one rewrite your whole poem. Then - once you know what you want - start hammering the AI into making specific changes.
Alright, back to the article…
Once you’ve rewritten, and have many versions of the poem, many lines, many options, etc. and you’ve almost got exactly what you want, it’s okay to…
5. Manually Rewrite
If the AI won’t do what you want, just manually rewrite. You remember that, right? Just typing without a computer telling you what to do? People did it all the time back in the 90s. I still enjoy it from time to time.
Even here, I’ll get some help from the AI, by asking it for rhyme suggestions, if there is a line I want to keep and I need a later line I want to rhyme with it. When I’m done, I’ll feed the whole poem into the AI an ask “does this work?” It will tell me if any aspect of the form or rhyme is broken.
This is why I call it “AI-assisted” rather than “AI-written.” The AI helps me write, but I as the human artist am always making artistic choices, saying yes or no to everything it gives me and feeding it everything I want it to say. A human poet pours themselves into their poetry. I do the same. I just have an assistant to help me figure out the rhyme and style and bounce ideas off of.
I hope you found that helpful/interesting. I’m sure this process will change as fast as AI does. If you liked this article, please subscribe so you can see more of my poetry and art when it comes out: