Once a friend of T.S. Eliot asked him to write commentary to his The Waste Land. He promised, but never did. After a long while the friend reminded him again, he responded “it’s your job, not mine.”
"fired the shot heard round the world" at Concord, MA
I was initially amazed at how ChatGPT analyzes and interprets the poems as a whole or even line by line. I was at a loss to understand how it was trained to do such a marvelous thing until one day one of my high schoolmates posted the epitaph of the grave of the two British soldiers died at the first deadly clash of the Independence War at Concord, MA on April 19, 1775. Ralph Waldo Emerson (who lived nearby) wrote after touring the site, “Here once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world." The epitaph is:
"They came three thousand miles, and died,
To keep the Past upon its throne;
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan."
James Lowell’s poem is the perfect epitaph
The epitaph is taken from a poem with a title of Lines by James Lowell. It is so fitting as if Lowell wrote the poem particularly for this grave. I did a bit research and it turned out that James Lowell wrote the poem “Lines’ after visiting the gravesite with Nathanial Hawthorne in 1849. The epitaph was adorned in 1910.
It obviously has no idea whose poem it was interpreting.
ChatGPT told me James Lowell never wrote “Lines” poem, I did Google search and found it on the Gutenberg ebook. When I asked it to read the lines on epitaph, it said the lines come from the poem "The Men of Old England" by William Barnes, describing the sacrifice made by English colonists who traveled thousands of miles to settle in America, and the rest are rubbish.
I gave it another chance by regenerating another response, this time is from the poem "The Men of Forty-eight" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, referring to the English soldiers who died during the American Revolution, fighting to maintain the British colonial rule in America. The interpretation is to the point.
When I asked it to show me the complete poem of Tennyson’s “The Men of Forty-eight", he responded, “I’m sorry, but Alfred Lord Tennyson did not write a poem titled "The Men of Forty-eight".” Oh well.
High comprehension skill in reading
ChatGPT’s high comprehension skill when reading is well known. It has extensive knowledge about language, grammar and syntax. It knows numerous relationships and patterns between words and phrases. It was reported that after reading a lengthy complex article, it can write an excellent summary or critique. I presume it can do better if you let it read entire poem.
There is a Chinese saying, 盡信書不如無書 (It is better to have no books than to believe in books blindly). Unfortunately it also applies to ChatGPT at this stage, still a lot to be desired, a potential tremendous tool though it may be. I'll use it as a personal tutor reading poems, keeping in mind it is not a trustworthy one.
