What Would Mary Oliver Make of AI?
Imagining a conversation with my favorite poet about AI, cottage core aesthetics, and how to be a creative in the social media world
In thinking about creativity, humanity, AI, and nature, my mind has been going back and forth between non-fiction reading on these topics and breaks with the beauty of Mary Oliver’s nature-centric poetry. To explore this more, and to point towards which of her poems I think about related to AI, here is a fictional conversation and my imagined responses of what the poet may have said to advise us. One might call this upmarket philosophical fan-fiction—so be it. My primary source for this is her interview from 2017 in On Being and several linked articles in the footnotes. Here are seven questions I wish we could ask her and seven imagined but informed responses. When I use actual quotes from her from the interview, the words in the piece are italicized.
Question One: You spent your life walking, paying attention, and writing about the natural world, and the lives of the small divinities that live among us. Before we get into the current happenings of the world, I wonder if you might tell us how you’d recommend future or current creatives might live out this spring?
Mary Oliver: Well…I’m a poet, not a therapist, so I’m not sure I can speak to a broad experience. I can speak to how I most often spent my springs, and maybe your readers can take from that whatever they will.
What I loved most about spring was being present enough to see the rapid changes that occur right outside my door. As I’ve said before, I don’t like buildings, so no matter the season in Cape Cod, I would be out there. Spring was a softening, and I knew my small beach and pathways enough over the years to have a sort of kinship with the rabbits, the insects, the way the tides changed just as the first blooms began to came in and the first glimpses of moss emerged. So what I might advise is for people to— as soon as possible— get out of buildings and into nature, and to be there regularly, like it’s a relationship you value—because it can be.
Question Two: Let’s get into our first question about the modern world. What do you make of social media, Mary?