ART OF THE QUESTION

by Dick Altman

Art created by Shutterstock AI image generator in response to "Art of the Question."

Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach: With the rise of the popular new chatbot ChatGPT, colleges are restructuring some courses and taking preventive measures. —The New York Times, January 16, 2023

Disclaimer: ChatGPT inspired

but did not write this poem. And

what if it did?  What, at bottom,

are we afraid of—that a machine

might outthink us? From childhood,

I thrilled to science fiction evolving

into science fact.  Bring on the

machines!

 

If Socrates were alive today,

I can hear him ask, “Why spend life

trying to find answers,

when life’s key may lie

in finding the right questions?”

 

The best leaders, I often think,

posit the best questions.

 

Ask the right question, I’d tell

my peers, and you may find

exactly the answer we’ve all been

probing/struggling for.

 

As AI’s narrative powers grow,

exponentially/computationally,

we need to learn how best

to feed its appetite.

 

Think about your day and mine—

think about the river of questions

that ebb and flow through life’s

continuum.

 

Rarely do we ponder the process

that instinctively—or so it seems—

lets us arrive at decisions that

guide home/work/play/passion.

 

One could argue—and I’d agree—

all conscious life thrives, or fails,

on the quality of its questions.

 

Perhaps we have reached the age

to turn education on its head—

to teach our young "The Art

of the Question". 

 

So that apps like ChatGPT

can learn, in turn, to grind out

answers worthy of our curiosity

and explorations.

 

Think of it as a new educational

dawn.

 

I say let’s welcome, not fear,

the rising binary sun

of a Socratic Age reborn.

 

Or as Hamlet might have

prophetically put it:

 

To ask... 

 

To answer... 

 

That is the question

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.

IN THE AFTERMATH

OF KASHMIR'S FEBRUARY 14, 2019 ATTACK ON AN INDIAN ARMY CONVOY

by Huma Sheikh

A bitter winter in Srinagar had just started to ease when the latest crisis in Kashmir was sparked on 14 February. That afternoon a local member of a Pakistan-based militant group rammed a car laden with explosives into a bus carrying Indian paramilitaries. The explosion was heard for miles around. At least 40 people were killed, the highest death toll from a single attack in the history of the insurgency. Above: A Kashmiri Muslim woman looks on as Indian government forces stand guard after clashes with separatist protesters. Photograph: Yawar Nazir/Getty Images. —The Guardian, March 2, 2019

No matter what the glistening forms
in blue cosmic wings tell me, I see
drones soaring in despair.

I left Kashmir lives ago and my veins
drained of past gore,
hallucinate in this world—Florida’s panhandle,
pounding, floating wraiths, spanning the distance,
gasping—
Rumi’s chaotic freedom.

Today, on the internet, a deceased trooper's daughter wailing;
forty mugshots scrolling the dead across the screen;
Kashmiri students, children of Indian Kashmir,
disappearing in Dehradun dungeons,
eyes of Sikh keepers burning a storm—protestors’ roar outside;
Kashmiri traders in Lucknow, whipped and kicked;
pack animals, carrying identity wares.

How to rebuild a sense of refuge when hope beans spill,
dissolve, in a battle?
Hadn’t these students, traders, escaped warfare in Kashmir?
Deaths bloom for the kith of the slain;
memories of dear ones an endless crackle of real flesh storm
dropping to ashes.
For Kashmiris still there,
war an everyday meal,
some eat, some fast by chance.

I question violence;
India and Pakistan’s territorial land-grab war,
ask myself if voicing feelings,
otherness, isn’t transcending bitterness?

Kashmir floats with me even here,
new crises piled on old ones—
a pedantic coop, winged prison,
war crumb confetti.
I do the ant’s painstaking
weight lifting of fragments—
senile Socrates.


Huma Sheikh is originally from Kashmir, currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Florida State. Her prose and verse have appeared in various journals and magazines. A memoir and book of poems are in progress.

SOCRATES AND CASEY ANTHONY, A DIALOGUE

by Jan Keough

The poet's photoshopped image of Casey Anthony with Socrates and a young student in Raphael’s "School  of Athens".

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The Florida sheriff's office that investigated the disappearance of Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter overlooked evidence that someone in their home did a Google search for "fool-proof" suffocation methods on the day the girl was last seen alive. . . . WKMG reports that sheriff's investigators pulled 17 vague entries only from the computer's Internet Explorer browser, not the Mozilla Firefox browser commonly used by Casey Anthony. --Huffington Post

The wily fox, as some called Socrates,
spoke with Casey Anthony the other day
at an unknown cellular location.

Casey, in hiding after the trial, and Socrates,
freed from bodily inconvenience after his trial,
converged to resolve a thorny dilemma.

“Which is best,” she texted, “to escape punishment and live to regret?
Or to face the punishing side-effects of actions
made from a selfish and immature attitude?”

Socrates, reclining on his metaphysical marble couch,
lifted the Droid close to his eyes.
Texting was not his favorite method of communication.

He preferred to gaze directly at those
who wished to be freed
from the burning disgrace of ignorance.

“Tell me,” he began,
“which Browser is best to use,
Internet Explorer or Firefox?”


Jan Keough lives in RI and the internet.  She is co-founder of The Origami Poems Project which aspires to free the poet by promoting micro-chapbooks of original poetry.