The paradox of
Autocorrect insisting
    "Paradise Lost”


		17 August 2023

This one was just a little fun on AllPoetry. 

A couple of months back I commented to my friend Sammy about some errors Autocorrect had inflicted on a message I sent to her. I decided it should be called "Artificial Unintelligence" or AU instead of AI, and suggested I'd add the concept onto my list of ever growing notes for future poems.

AllPoetry has an AI scanning program which give some criticism of what you write - which is helpful if you take it with a large grain of salt. Words are called "weak" or "strong" with no reference to context. A poem by Ken Doll on the site, Vagabond Blues, gave the tip "Felt long-winded at _, fewer words = more powerful". At 58 words, I thought that a bit harsh, so I wondered what it would think of Milton as an example. Coming in at over 10,500 lines, (let alone words,) Paradise Lost is a piece of classic poetry. I have not yet read it, but anyone who can maintain free verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) for that length deserve respect for perseverance at least. So I thought I would take it to the other extreme. 

A haiku is probably as small as I want to write. I'm now told by my AI friend that it is "too short". Given that a haiku is written to a particular 5/7/5 syllable count, I'm not sure on what it bases this "thought".

I'm not sure it's a good haiku, but I hope it makes you laugh.  

I was moderately proud of the fact that I snuck some western poetic devices into an eastern form. "Para" as the second syllable of the first line and first syllable of the third is coupled with an assonance rhyme (vowel sound) of "-dox)" in line one with "Lost" in line 3. I didn't have much room to play with, but play I did.