Visiting the Poetic Mountaintop of AI (0)

Journey to the Unknown

Foreword

So far, I have completed four articles in the series “Visiting the Mountaintop of AI,” titled (I) A Garden Made of Water, (II) Finding the Shore, (III) Dreams Drift upon the Ocean’s Gleam, and (IV) Campus Ode to Tomorrow. This is the fifth. I should have written this article about MacArthur Park first since the poem “Journey to the Unknown” (the poem this article will primarily center on) was actually the first poem that AI helped revise. However, it didn’t come first because the initial four poems were all written during my Spring Break in 2023, and the Water Garden poem was the first one I read using my cloned voice and made a video about. Therefore, I titled this article “Visiting the Mountaintop of AI (0),” which should’ve been the last article I wrote this summer. Unfortunately, I was too busy preparing for my qualifying exams to finish it. Now, a semester later, in the last month of 2023, I guess it’s time to finish it. ^_^

I first visited the famous (somewhat notorious) MacArthur Park to watch the sunset on November 24, 2022. I actually discovered this park through Google Maps on my iPhone. I found a park near my apartment (only a 10-minute ride away) and decided to take a look. The park is very beautiful, with a characteristic tall fountain spraying a spout of water into the air in the middle of a lake. Unfortunately, the environmental protection there leaves much to be desired, making the park notorious for its stacked trash, bad smell, and unsafe environment. It has a pretty long and rich history dating back to the 1920s. Most notably, Jimmy Webb wrote an iconic song called “MacArthur Park,” which lamented the loss of a love relationship using the park as a poignant metaphor.

I was fascinated by the beautiful views here despite its bad reputation. I found people there basically very nice and free — they weren’t busy rushing to work or something important, but just enjoyed their carefree spare time enjoying the beautiful view at the park. Since I was so concentrated on the freshness of the park view, I didn’t write anything during my first visit. Two days later, it was a Sunday and I came back, leaving this poem:

Old Fountain

Near an old fountain
Floats liberty of demise
Lifting a tenacious mountain
Disturbs the heart in disguise

Rise up spirited hope
Wandering around with free love
Sing out in a nostalgic scope
Chasing after the unchained dove

Nov 26, 2022
At MacArthur Park

After that, I would periodically come to this park to watch the sunset. Sometimes I’d write something there near the lake when I was in the mood. For example, on January 29 this year, inspired by the harmony of the micro-ecosystem of the park filled with all kinds of ducks, seagulls, and geese, and people feeding them in a harmonious atmosphere, I wrote the following poem titled Sunset:

Sunset

When we are together
Watching the sunset at the pier
With merry seagulls fluttering
Wars and conquests shall never appear

Hope we’ll dream together
Of a sky more blue and clear
Hope we’ll walk together
On a land with love and care

Shall we bring peace back
To a better home shared by every creature
Shall we bring empathy back
With love shining everywhere

When we are together
Hope and peace singing in the air
With all living things on the planet
Desires for tomorrow are still here

1/29/2023
At MacArthur Park

This poem is actually about much more than the harmonious ecosystem in the park. In the current globalized world, this poem celebrates and calls for peace, love, and care among all humans, which extends to all living things on this planet. When we are filled with love, taste, and empathy for each other, there will be no place for conquests and wars on earth. I love peace, and I despise wars. I believe in the kindness of humanity, and I am optimistic about a free and peaceful tomorrow. Later, this November, I played this poem to my students in the last calculus discussion section of that semester, to emphasize the important elements that truly great educators should have and try to create: love, care, and togetherness.

Also, this is the last poem during the first half of this year that I wrote completely on my own, without any assistance (including revision or suggesting words) from AI. After that, as I mentioned in “A Garden Made of Water,” I started to become surprised and startled by the power of AI’s revision abilities and therefore relied much more on it to assist in poem revisions. Honestly speaking, using AI really decreased some fun and control of mine in the process of creating poetry. And that’s basically why starting from the summer of 2023, I began fully relying on myself again. “Awaken in Los Angeles” (Memorial Day Holiday Weekend), “Nocturne’s Lament” (Jun 30, 2023), “Resting Seagull” (July 10, 2023), and “Reading Flowing Years” (July 31, 2023) were all solely written on my own without any human or non-human revision. They are all my pet and darling works, and I, as a poet, will definitely write more down the road because that’s what I love to do.

Alright, let’s go back to the poem about MacArthur Park. During that time, I was taking two math classes at school: Graduate Statistics and Topics in Topology. Although I finally managed to get A’s in both courses, during the President’s day period, I was doing poorly in both of them. I found it very hard to follow the lectures, even though I had prepared for them quite a long time before each class. Each time I left a lecture, I would usually find it very hopeless as if the future for me was dim and dark. Each time I left a lecture, I was like a bird that had lost the strength to fly. In that academic setting, at the park one day, I wrote the following lines:

On the journey to the unknown
A bird has lost the will to fly
He’s used to weeping alone
Under his wings settled by the sky

Blue sky above blue dreams
Floats a star from the past
Shining the journey for me
With an unruly spirit filled

Other birds have left long before
Leaving a trace of mockery
A rebellious spirit is with him yet
That’s why he will never be lost

But where can he find their shadows
Who will send him to the future
Where he can touch a better land and sky
That’s where he belongs

The journey is still here
The star will wait for him
It will be shining forever
It will light up a vast sky

That’s the original work, without further modification on rhyme and improvements. A good thing about AI is that it can do all these things for me. So, I told AI to “rewrite the poem imitating the first verse with rhyme. You should not change the first verse; that is, you should keep the first four lines exactly the same as the original version. And also preserve the same writing style.” Why would I let it imitate the first verse’s rhyme? Well, because most AI-generated poems followed the AABB rhyme scheme, and I wanted it to be different. Here’s ChatGPT’s response:

On the journey to the unknown
A bird has lost the will to soar
He’s accustomed to weeping alone
With sky’s embrace, he feels forlorn

Golden sunrays light the way
A beacon of hope in his heart
Guiding him through each new day
With strength he can’t depart

Fellow birds have long since flown
Leaving him with taunts and jeers
Yet a fiery spirit, he has shown
Defiant, he’ll conquer his fears

But where do their shadows reside
Who sent him towards tomorrow
A place where he can freely glide
A world of joy and no sorrow

His journey continues on
The star’s light beckoning bright
Its glimmer shall never be gone
A sky ablaze with endless light.

That’s great, isn’t it? Then, I asked ChatGPT to give it a title, and it responded “Journey to the Unknown”. That’s it! I like this title. Later, I further modified this poem and added more lines, and here’s the final version:

Journey to the Unknown

On the journey to the unknown
A bird has lost the will to soar
He’s accustomed to weeping alone
With sky’s embrace, he feels forlorn

Golden sunrays light the way
A beacon of hope in his heart
Guiding him through each day
With strength he won’t depart

Fellow birds have long since flown
Leaving him with taunts and jeers
Echoes of their wings in flight
Whispers of their songs remain

Where did the echos reside
Who will send him back to tomorrow
A place where he can freely glide
A world of bliss and no sorrow

Yet a fiery spirit, he has shown
Defiant, he’ll conquer his fears
Through the trials, he has grown
And overcome the falling tears

With a heart full of passion and might
He marches forth with his head held high
Fierce determination shining bright
And a steadfast spirit that won’t die

For he knows he was meant to fly
To reach for the sun’s blazing fire
He must explore the vastness of the sky
For he never lost the strength to desire

His journey continues on
The star’s light beckoning bright
Its glimmer shall never be gone
A sky ablaze with endless light.

At MacArthur Park
Presidents’ Day, 2023

Notice I first changed “With strength he can’t depart” to “With strength he won’t depart,” because the latter just reads better. “He can’t depart” seems to say he’s unable to depart that strength, which is obviously not what I wanted to convey.

Also, I changed “Who sent him towards tomorrow” to “Who will send him back to tomorrow” because, again, the latter was what I meant to show in my original work. “He” (me) belongs to a place called “tomorrow,” i.e., the future, but he was trapped in the current time, and he felt a bit lonely, and he wanted somebody to send him back to the place where he belonged. Why do I say that? Well, if we’re given a chance to choose which time we want to live in now or 100 years later, perhaps we would choose 100 years later when the technology, medical care, and almost everything are much more advanced than the current time. And I somehow think that the current times don’t catch up with my ideas a lot of the time. I do think that I have thinking trespassing the current time, and sometimes I do think that I can see clearly what the future is, and if given a chance, I’ll go ahead and lead that kind of trend to go to that future together. But anyway, the second line was what I was trying to say in my original version.

In addition, I changed the order a bit and added a few new lines like “With a heart full of passion and might / He marches forth with his head held high / Fierce determination shining bright / And a steadfast spirit that won’t die,” in order to clearly depict the process of the bird conquering the fears with optimistic perseverance.

Like ‘Sunset’, I also showed the video for ‘Journey to the Unknown’ in my calculus discussion to cheer my students up. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure I really wanted to disclose such personal feelings to my students in an occasion typically expected to be professional. Besides, that would involve a lot of promotion input as that would directly show a very vulnerable side of me. But after contemplating, I believed that sharing this poem would also be considered a broader sense of education which coincides with my role as TA perfectly well given the uplifting and optimistic tone of this poem. Besides, I believe as students sitting there, they don’t care much about appropriateness (albeit this poem is no doubt appropriate); rather, they want something special, something different from their laborious and tedious routines, and that’s what makes their college life memorable in a very positive way. To transition more smoothly and give its writing background, I wrote and read the following preface and afterword:

Today, I’d like to share a personal poem I wrote during a challenging time. Last semester, as a first-year math PhD student and TA for Math 129, I faced significant challenges in both my courses and teaching. I don’t think I did well in either teaching or my studies. I felt lonely, as though I was losing my way. Especially in one statistics course, where I scored way below the median in the second midterm. ‘Journey to the Unknown’ emerged from that period, symbolizing my struggles through the metaphor of a bird — representing myself — who lost the strength to fly. This poem is a reflection of my journey through those challenges.

As you’ve seen, ‘Journey to the Unknown’ ends with a note of hope; it mirrors my own transformation. Despite these struggles, my final score in that very statistics course became much higher than the average, and I managed to get As in all the courses I took that semester. This transformation was not easy, but it was possible. Like the bird in the poem, I found my strength to fly again. Today, I share this with you to remind you that no matter the difficulties, there is always hope and the potential to soar. You all have that strength within you, especially now, as we move forward from our midterms.

That was the last time in the first half of this year I visited this park. I started to not like that park because of a gunshot case that happened in March near that park. So I’ve never visited the park at night till now. Nine months later, on Thanksgiving Day, I went to that park again because of nostalgic feelings, and I penned a villanelle, which is part of the ‘Thanksgiving Trilogy (Villanelle)’ I wrote during that Thanksgiving vacation. Let’s just use this nostalgic villanelle to end this article, as well as the entire ‘Mountaintop’ series this year!

In MacArthur’s realm where memories gently sleep,
Beside calm waters reflecting skies so grand,
There lies a whisper of times both sweet and deep.

A half-turn round the sun, the seasons keep
Their silent change, yet hearts can understand,
In MacArthur’s realm where memories gently sleep.

The gulls that soared, the shadows long and steep,
Echo a yearning for that same bright strand,
There lies a whisper of times both sweet and deep.

Nostalgia’s touch, still so tender yet steep,
For every laugh, each moment that was planned,
In MacArthur’s realm where memories gently sleep.

The city’s hum, a lullaby to weep,
For days gone by, for the past’s soft demand,
There lies a whisper of times both sweet and deep.

Thanksgiving comes, and though we may not leap,
We feel the pulse of nature’s timeless hand,
In MacArthur’s realm where memories gently sleep,
There lies a whisper of times both sweet and deep.

Nov 23, 2023
At MacArthur Park, Westlake

Ivan Zhanhu Feng
5:35 pm on December 31, 2023
At Fairmont Apartments, Los Angeles