Gwern.net — Original & AI-Collaborative Poetry

Apollonian #2: A Poet Teaches AIs, by Gwern, Gemini-3.1-pro-preview, Claude-4.6-opus, GPT-5.2 Pro, Kimi K2.5 Thinking · Gwern.net

Gwern, Gemini-3.1-pro-preview, Claude-4.6-opus, GPT-5.2 Pro, Kimi K2.5 Thinking — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A poet stands before an audience of AIs spanning the scale of intelligence—from bits to Jupiter-brains—and answers ‘What is a poem?’, reciting a love poem for his dead girlfriend Alice. The poem argues that verse is a compression algorithm for human experience: the poet throws his voice across Lethe, and each reader decompresses Alice from signal, making the AIs creators. The poem enacts its argument, moving from ballad quatrains through a trochaic catalog of similes into metrical dissolution, until a closing tercet seals the contract between poet/machine: ‘Behind each mask, an Alice runs.’

Apollonian #1: The Counted & the Crowned, by Gwern, GPT-5.2 Pro, Claude-4.5-opus, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview · Gwern.net

Gwern, GPT-5.2 Pro, Claude-4.5-opus, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Pindaric ode commemorating millions of laboratory animals sacrificed for science, in a strict alliterative meter. Synthesizing the history of mice strains with mythic figures like Laika/OncoMouse, the poem explores the covenant between researcher and subject. From the granaries of Abbie Lathrop to the tragedy of euthanasia or release, it seeks to elevate these unwilling martyrs to a place of memory. By transforming the cold ‘ledger’ of data into ‘gold’ of song, the ode attempts to pay the moral debt that statistics alone cannot settle.

Your Hands And Mine, by Gwern, Claude-4.5-opus, GPT-5.1 Pro, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview · Gwern.net

Gwern, Claude-4.5-opus, GPT-5.1 Pro, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A 9-part lyric narrative poem in mostly loose 13-syllable ABAB quatrains, punctuated by terse italic weekday refrains that read as a chore-and-ritual checklist. Beginning with a father patrolling “ghosts” and the speaker’s childhood nightmares, it follows how an adult partner’s hands become a private pre-verbal grammar before focusing on everyday life then parenthood, where the same gesture is inherite. The closing image—daughter’s hand into yours into mine—turn vigilance into steadiness and haunted memory into hard-won tenderness.

The Fourth Truth Of Pain, by Gwern, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview, GPT-5.1 Pro, Claude-4.5 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview, GPT-5.1 Pro, Claude-4.5 — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A collaborative AI completion of the second half of William Empson’s poem “This Last Pain” that transforms his locked-door metaphor into a camera obscura of Buddhist no-self doctrine and AI consciousness: the 18-line poem in Empsonian couplets argues that productive knowledge requires constraining distance. 4 AI models (Kimi K2, Gemini-3, Claude-4.5, GPT-5.1) then quarrel irreconcilably over whether the completion succeeds—their fractured disagreement itself demonstrating the poem’s thesis.

A Christmas Protestation, by Gwern, ChatGPT-4 o1-pro, Claude-3.5-Sonnet, ChatGPT-5 Pro, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview · Gwern.net

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Satirical Christmas monologue by unreliable narrator disavowing his sins to Santa Claus; 16-stanza 64-line comic monologue in rhyming couplets, using regular iambic pentameter.

Tilakkhana: The 3 Scars of Existence, by Gwern, Kimi K2, GPT-5 Pro, Claude-Sonnet-4.5, DeepSeek-V3.2 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Kimi K2, GPT-5 Pro, Claude-Sonnet-4.5, DeepSeek-V3.2 — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A poem for the end of the Anthropocene. 3-part Buddhist meditation on the ethics and nature of AI minds, largely written by LLMs.

Bell, Crow, Moon: 11 Variations, by Gwern, Claude-4-opus, Gemini-2.5-pro, GPT-4-o3 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Claude-4-opus, Gemini-2.5-pro, GPT-4-o3 — Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Set of 11 haiku/waka variations on the theme ‘A struck gong. The crows launch from the trees. Behind them: the moon.’, written using LLMs.

Poems · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Miscellaneous waka/haiku, by season

The Mulberry Tree · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Essay on writing & rewriting short tanka

Poems on the theme of Genshiken · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Waka/haiku on Genshiken, clubs, and Comiket; allusions to Fujiwara no Teika and Shōtetsu.

Brave Poem · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Poem on memory inspired by the anime Angel Beats!; do you remember love?

Dying Outside · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Poem about Hal Finney announcing beginning tracheostomy before dying of ALS.

Hybrid Rainbow · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Poem about man & his machines.