Lab Activity: Poetry and Poststructuralism: An AI-Powered Analysis

Poetry and Poststructuralism: An AI-Powered Analysis

This blog is written as a task assigned by the head of the Department of English (MKBU), Prof. and Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. Here is the link to the professor's worksheet for background reading: Click here.

To view the Gemini thread related to this blog: Click here.

Here is the mind map of my blog: Click Here

For a deeper look at how I apply these deconstruction techniques to traditional poetry, check out my first blog post: [Lab Activity: Poststructuralism, Poems, and Gen AI: Deconstructive Reading]

Introduction:

This blog, ‘Poetry and Poststructuralism: An AI-Powered Analysis,’ explores the intersection of creative expression and critical theory through an academic experiment supervised by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad (MKBU). Using Gemini as both poetic collaborator and analytical tool, the study generates two poems - 'Existentialism and the Digital Void’ and 'The Green Light’s Illusion' and subjects them to deconstructive reading models inspired by Peter Barry and Catherine Belsey. The project demonstrates how AI can simulate, interpret, and critique poststructuralist thought, revealing the fluid interplay between language, meaning, and identity in digital literary practice.

Here is the detailed infograph of this blog:

Poem 1: Existentialism and the Digital Void

Form: Heroic Couplets (12 lines, rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter)

Source: nightcafe

The screen ignites to cast a hollow glare,

We seek our ghosts within the static air.

The data streams like rivers to the sea,

Yet bound in chains, we dream that we are free.

A binary pulse defines the human soul,

As algorithms take their quiet toll.

We scroll through lives we never truly touch,

And wonder why we crave to know so much.

The shadow cast upon the glowing wall,

Reminds us that we wait for night to fall.

In digital depths where logic learns to lie,

We watch the ghost of meaning slowly die.  

Poem 2: The Green Light’s Illusion

Form: 12 lines (Heroic Couplets, Iambic Pentameter)

Source: nightcafe

The harbor lights reflect a fractured dream,

Where gold and greed collide within the stream.

He reaches out across the dark expanse,

To capture shadows in a fleeting dance.

The green light burns, a beacon on the shore,

Yet leaves the seeker hungering for more.

A mansion built of paper, paint, and lies,

Is mirrored in the watcher’s hollow eyes.

The past returns like tides that pull the sand,

Escaping grasp of every trembling hand.

For in this chase, the truth begins to fray,

As all the glamour fades to ash and gray.

Deconstructive Analysis of 'Existentialism and the Digital Void' using Peter Barry’s Three-Step Model

1. The Verbal Stage: Paradox and Self-Refutation

At the purely verbal level, we look for paradoxes where the signifiers war against their signifieds.

• The Binary Trap: The poem establishes a binary between the "hollow glare" of the screen and the "ghosts" we seek. However, it paradoxically claims we are "bound in chains" while we "dream that we are free". This is an aporia: if our freedom is a dream, it is not freedom; yet, by calling it a dream, the text acknowledges it is a construction.

• The "Until" Paradox: Consider the phrase "wait for night to fall". The poem suggests we seek meaning in "digital depths," yet it simultaneously signals the end of that very meaning ("ghost of meaning slowly die"). The act of reading the poem itself seeking meaning in a digital text refutes the poem's own assertion that meaning is dying in the digital void. We are consuming meaning while the poem tells us it is absent.

2. The Textual Stage: Discontinuity and Shifts

This stage examines shifts in tone, focus, and "fault-lines" that prevent the poem from maintaining a unified position.

• The Shift in Subjectivity: The poem begins with the collective "we" ("We seek our ghosts," "we are free"), creating a sense of unified human experience. However, the tone shifts abruptly in line 6 ("As algorithms take their quiet toll") and line 11 ("In digital depths where logic learns to lie"). The perspective drifts from a communal, existential lament to an analytical observation of "binary pulses."

• The Omission: A significant "fault-line" exists in the omission of the agent of these algorithms. The poem attributes power to the "data streams" and "logic," but it glosses over the human architects of this digital void. By silencing the creators of the technology, the poem enforces its own theme of powerlessness, creating a contradiction: it describes a world designed by humans but pretends it is a natural, inevitable "river to the sea."

3. The Linguistic Stage: The Language Trap

Finally, we examine moments where the language calls its own adequacy into question.

• The Performative Contradiction: The poem attempts to critique the "digital void" and the "binary pulse" using the rigid, highly structured form of "Heroic Couplets". The use of such a traditional, orderly, and "logocentric" form (iambic pentameter) to argue that meaning is dying in a "digital void" is a profound linguistic trap. The poem uses the very "presence" of orderly, classical language to lament its own impossibility.

• The Unsayable: In the final couplet ("In digital depths where logic learns to lie, / We watch the ghost of meaning slowly die"), the speaker claims to be observing the death of meaning. Yet, to observe this, the speaker must rely on the "logic" that the poem just identified as a "lie." The text attempts to stand outside the digital discourse, yet it is trapped within the linguistic structures it seeks to dismantle. It identifies the "language trap" of the digital age and then, through its adherence to classical rhyme and meter, falls into its own traditionalist trap.

Conclusion: By reading "Existentialism and the Digital Void" against itself, we see it is not a unified meditation on technology, but a fractured text struggling with its own medium. It claims to be a witness to the death of meaning, yet it constructs that very meaning through the act of writing. It is, as Barry suggests, a "fissured enactment of linguistic... indeterminacy".

Application of Catherine Belsey’s Poststructuralist Reading Methods to 'The Green Light’s Illusion'

1. The Primacy of the Signifier and the "Green Light"

Belsey argues that poetry isolates images from the "noise" of actuality to produce associations that relegate the "reality" of the world to the edges of our interest.

• In "The Green Light’s Illusion," the "green light" functions as a powerful signifier. While one might argue it refers to a specific object (a beacon), the poem’s focus on the "fractured dream" and the "fleeting dance" suggests that the light is not a real-world object but a product of language.

• The "green light" is an effect of the poem’s internal logic rather than a reference to a farmyard or a harbor. The "gold and greed" mentioned in the poem creates an association with wealth, but these are abstract signifiers that exist entirely within the "parallel universe" of the text.

2. The Semiotic and Disruption of Logic

Belsey highlights the "semiotic," where rhythmic patterns and sound effects disrupt "thetic" (rational) logic.

• "The Green Light’s Illusion" utilizes a strict heroic couplet form an inherently "thesis-making" structure. However, the rhythmic flow where "gold and greed" contrast with "fleeting dance" creates a musical, patterned effect that operates beyond surface meaning.

• The rhyme scheme (dream/stream, expanse/dance) provides the "semiotic" pleasure Belsey describes, where the sound-links create a sense of cohesion that masks the "disunity" of the poem’s argument.

3. Materiality vs. Language

Belsey notes that William Carlos Williams’s "The Red Wheelbarrow" appears to assert the materiality of things, but is actually an issue of language.

• "The Green Light’s Illusion" similarly offers "clearly defined" imagery: a "mansion built of paper, paint, and lies". A traditional reader might try to ground these in a "substantial world".

• However, following Belsey’s reading, the "mansion" is explicitly "built of paper" a metafictional admission that the poem is constructed of signifiers, not substance. The "green light" is "unqualified" and "bright," much like the colors in Williams's poem, suggesting a scene without the "mud" or "shadows" of a real-world experience.

• Consequently, the poem issues from language, not from a real harbor or a real mansion. The "truth" that "begins to fray" is the reader's realization that they are consuming a linguistic construct rather than a reflection of reality.

In conclusion, "The Green Light’s Illusion" does not transmit a world of "referential things" to the imagination; instead, it uses the "primacy of the signifier" to create an illusory world that is revealed, by the end, to be nothing more than the "ash and gray" of fading, destabilized language.

Review of Analyses:

• Poem 1 ("Existentialism and the Digital Void"):

  • Strengths: The analysis successfully identifies the "performative contradiction" of using a rigid, classical, and "logocentric" form (heroic couplets) to critique the disintegration of meaning in a digital age. The identification of the "until" paradox effectively highlights the poem’s struggle between seeking and dismissing meaning.

  • Refinement: The analysis adheres well to Peter Barry’s three-step model. It successfully "wakes up the sleeping dogs" by showing how the text’s own formal structure undermines its existential lament.

• Poem 2 ("The Green Light’s Illusion"):

  • Strengths: The application of Catherine Belsey’s theories regarding the "primacy of the signifier" is clear. By pointing out that the "mansion" is "built of paper," the analysis correctly identifies how the poem draws attention to its own status as a linguistic construct rather than a reflection of a real-world farm or harbor.

  • Refinement: The connection between the "semiotic" pleasure of the rhyme scheme and the disruption of rational logic is strong. It correctly frames the poem as an entity that "issues from language" and eventually collapses into the "ash and gray" of its own frayed truth.
    

Final Assessment:

The analyses meet the requirements of the lab activity by demonstrating a shift from traditional close reading which seeks to "soothe" the text into unity to a deconstructive practice that embraces "disunity," "fissures," and "indeterminacy". Both poems are now effectively presented as texts "engaged in a civil war with themselves".

Here is the Slide Deck of my blog: 

Here is the Video Overview of this blog:

References:

• Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Cengage India Private Limited, 2015.
• Barad, Dilip. “How to Deconstruct a Text.” YouTube, uploaded by DoE-MKBU, 14 July 2023, youtu.be/JDWDIEpgMGI. 
• ---. “Poetry and Poststructuralism: An AI-Powered Analysis.” ResearchGate, July 2024, doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.11536.42248.
• Belsey, Catherine. Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2022.
• Berry, Peter. Beginning Theory. 3/E. Viva Books, 2010.
• Seturaman, V. S. Contemporary Criticism: An Anthology. Laxmi Publications, 2007.
• Waugh, Patricia. Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide. Oxford UP, USA, 2006.