|
||
2 POEMS Katharine Coles |
PLATONIC What can we get behind, if not By daylight, under eyelids it may be A sometimes-lovely backdrop, hell holder of presence. Why holster Brandishing purse-sized guns or reality
The visible is only a placeholder for real desire.
__ THE ROBOT EMANCIPATES ITSELF In this at least it’s way Not too happy with Along, wires fizzing Success in circuit Art after their makers To program adapting, becoming Failing to imagine. Whose Not to think about A buffing rag, we’re It rained. He needed Ever did. Unlike
Title from Artists and Robots, Grand Palace, 2018.
__ About "Robot": For me, the state of dislocation induced by travel, art, or time change—the unfamiliar in general—is a productive one for poetry. This poem had all three: I was in Paris, deeply jet-lagged, and looking not only at art but at art for which programming was the common medium for expression. One of the ideas that really engaged me was the way in which many of these works keep growing beyond their creators, so that they become expressions the creators couldn’t have foreseen. Of course, this is the problem of artificial intelligence, not to mention Frankenstein: at what point does the creature become a self, with determination? Like "Platonic," the poem investigates the nature of reality and what we can really know about it, which seems to be my subject these days. In case you’re curious, see a self-portrait in the exhibit: |