Day 30: The Problem with Monkeys

Happy National Poetry Month 2023! Curious about what I’m doing? Want to play along? Read more here.

[Heads-up: If you’re visiting regularly, please know that the bold, blue text is what I’m writing fresh each day. The black text is the same each day:>) ]

This is it! The final day of National Poetry Month! The final Digging for Poems Poem! But no pressure :>D It will be no surprise to see that I wrote about book from yesterday’s topics. I mean, c’mon, the word “muse” was right there! I know that was an obvious choice, but I had to. When I saw the word “monkey,” I thought of that “infinite monkey theorem” (though I didn’t know it had this official name). That idea that if you put a gazillion monkeys at typewriters (this theorem has been around for a while!), they’ll eventually produce Shakespeare. Right. But with AI everywhere recently, it made me think about what makes human writing important. Not the information. Not the order of the words. But the heart. Neither typing monkeys nor AI have that. 

Writing this brought to mind some books-about-books that I love. The Lee Bennett Hopkins anthology I Am the Book. My own BookSpeak: Poems About Books. Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s Read! Read! Read! and Write! Write! Write! Dan Yaccarino’s I Am a Story. Kate Messner’s How to Read a Story. And I need to get John Schu’s recent This Is a Story.  I know there are more, but these are a few of the books celebrating reading and writing that have touched me.

Thank you so much for playing along, for reading and commenting, and for being part of my month spent Digging for Poems! Soon, I’ll do a roundup post and also maybe a few thoughts about what I learned during this project.

 

4 Responses

  1. Oh, Laura, I love the explanation of the monkey and AI and how they can’t ever write “feeling love / whispering ache.” Beautiful! Here’s mine about books.

    Book
    Fill full seeding me
    Happy, strong
    Inspiration like a friend
    says life

  2. I thought we would all hear the siren call of the word book! Here’s my poem:

    Books

    Friends I love
    Inspiration to write
    Never stop

    It has been fun to follow the words and share poetry this month. Thanks, Laura for putting it all together and thanks to all the writers who took part, writing and sharing encouragement. Never stop!

    1. Yes, I should have said thank you earlier too. I guess I was in temporary denial that this was the end of the month! Thank you Laura and Diane and all the others who participated. I love the “Never stop” line in your poem and in your comment, Diane.

  3. A lovely finish to a month of poetry! I’m so glad I got to “play” and follow along with you!

    I’ve always wondered what the “Shakespeare couldn’t have written Shakespeare “ theorists think of the infinite monkeys!

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