Gemini, Please Analyze My Poem
One Powerful Way I, as a Poet, Have Embraced AI
The mere notion of artificial intelligence sends some poets spiraling — will their careers be upended? Will their reflective poems be replaced by soulless robotic verses?
It’s crucial that poets recognize AI as an ally rather than an enemy. Why? Because we have this tool available to us, we should accept it and utilize it while simultaneously not compromising our own human voices. There are an abundance of obvious ways that AI can assist us, such as finding fitting synonyms or fixing grammatical errors.
Above all, however, there is one trick I’ve found that has helped me significantly as a poet: asking AI to analyze my drafts.
A few months ago, I was conversing with UCLA psychology professor and poet Dr. Keith Holyoak about how AI had interpreted a poem I’d written as part of a study on artificial intelligence and poetry I conducted in January of this year. Dr. Holyoak is also co-director of the university’s Reasoning Lab, which investigates human thinking and reasoning. He and I both agreed that the interpretation was quite solid — and in his words,
“There seems to be a gap between the AI’s ability to interpret poems vs. generating good ones.”
Thinking about it then, I’d previously asked Google’s Gemini to analyze a couple of other poems I had written — and I’d received a fresh perspective full of insight, which had been incredibly valuable during the writing process.
(As an aside, Gemini has been my AI chatbot of choice as it’s given me the most in-depth and accurate responses on a variety of topics, from poetry to writing and beyond.)
Take this for example — while I was first crafting my poem “u” (later published here in the Blue Marble Review), I prompted Gemini with “please analyze this poem” followed by a draft of it. Gemini responded with two-and-a-half pages of analysis, which I’ll discuss next.
The length and depth of Gemini’s response impressed me. Not only did it take just a couple of seconds to appear on my screen, but it was also long (and not at all redundant or extraneous), detailed, thoughtful, and perhaps most importantly, it provided me with a clear direction to go in as I continued to revise “u.” Additionally, Gemini’s analysis helped me scrap some metaphors and similes that weren’t as strong or coherent meaning-wise as I’d hoped they could be.
Essentially, Gemini separated its response into six sections. Each one addressed a different aspect of the poem: Form and Structure, Imagery and Figurative Language, Sound and Rhythm, Speaker and Point of View, Theme and Meaning, and a summary followed by three “additional thoughts.” The sections included several sub-bullets that fell under the theme. When I asked Gemini why it chose those sections, it informed me that it was looking at the poem through the lens of a “poet’s ‘toolbox.’”
Here are some of the most useful comments Gemini provided to me:
“Speaker and Point of View: The speaker’s emotions are passionate and raw, veering between longing, pain, and a hint of anger at the unrequited love.”
This inspired me to further lean into the “veering” aspect — veering between emotions and also veering between thoughts.
“Imagery and Figurative Language: Simile: Comparing the butterfly wing to the beloved’s laugh suggests a fleeting presence and an elusive connection.”
“Theme and Meaning: The imagery of butterflies and papery wings suggests a feeling of fragility and vulnerability…”
I really liked these observations — I felt they were rather nuanced and sophisticated for an AI chatbot. Drawing from the cliché of “butterflies in one’s stomach,” I wrote the symbol of the butterfly into the poem (although the butterflies are on the speaker’s skin instead of in their stomach) to represent their uncertain hope. At the end of the poem, the narrator finds a butterfly wing, an echo of the elusive butterfly. Under “Theme and Meaning,” Gemini spoke accurately about the butterfly again. Overall, Gemini’s commentary on the butterfly encouraged me to expand the symbol more throughout the poem.
“Sound and Rhythm: The short lines and frequent pauses mimic the speaker’s breathlessness and the fragmented nature of their thoughts.”
I found it interesting that the chatbot managed to connect the line I wrote about the narrator’s breathlessness with the short lines I used throughout the poem.
Now when I’m drafting poetry, I almost always turn to Gemini for advice and analysis along the way. Using AI to help edit and develop poems is much more simple and effective than asking another human being, who may not have the time, patience, or experience to give such a thorough interpretation. Not to mention the fact that poetry is often a highly personal form of writing, meaning that poets may not always choose to share early drafts with others.
More complex queries like these are one of the primary reasons I believe that AI can be an incredibly powerful tool for poets (and by extension, writers) without sacrificing human creativity and emotion. For example, similar prompts can also be used to revise academic essays — such as how asking a chatbot to summarize a paragraph can show the writer if their intended meaning is coming through well. Allowing yourself to utilize AI isn’t the same as replacing human writers — it’s just another form of seeking feedback and a new point of view on a work.
