Otter Creek, dude, flows like melted silver ice, snakin’ through Middlebury’s veins, green as spinach dip. Old brick buildings stand tall, ghosts of brainiacs past, their scribbles stainin’ the walls, like ink splattered fast.
Moonlight paints spooky shadows on Gothic stuff, laughter echoes trapped inside, loud and rough. A cappella voices climb the air, silky and smooth, moonbeams dancin’ with the notes, a funky groove.
Bread Loaf whispers secrets in the pine tree crew, tombstones chillin’ in the chapel yard, boo hoo. Wrinkled faces tell old tales, etched in lines and cracks, friendships baked in laughter, dreams stuck in backpacks.
Sun chases leaves across worn steps, fall leaves on fire, Otter’s song like wind chimes, whisperin’ higher. Time melts like ice cream, forgotten in this mountain lair, past giggles and future dreams, floatin’ in the air.
Raise a plastic cup, let voices blend with mountain tunes, spirits flyin’ high on a cappella booms. Middlebury, it’s like a tapestry, cool and real, stones and leaves, laughter and secrets, forever sealed.
Yeah, this place ain’t bad, for an eighth-grader’s dream, Green mountains and ghosts, a pretty rad team.
Okay, that was hilarious. I was quite impressed by the first few iterations of the poem I got after I fed this prompt to Bard:
Write a poem for me about Middlebury College that captures its unique geographic location, its historic buildings, and its tradition of a cappella.
The poem that was generated back to me (not the one included here) was quite beautiful, with tight rhythm and 6 stanzas of ABAB rhyme scheme. I was impressed. However, I am an 8th grade English and Creative Writing teacher and I generally assign free-verse poetry to my students, so I fed Bard the same prompt again but I specified for it to be a “non-rhyming poem” this time. It generated a second rhyming poem. I fed Bard the same prompt again and specifically added this sentence: “Do not make it rhyme.” It generated a third rhyming poem. I found this amusing. Finally, I asked Bard to write a “free-verse poem” and it was able to follow the directions that time. Then I added, “Great job. Now make it sound like an eighth-grader.” It generated the poem that I included above, which does not sound to me like a real eighth-grade student trying to write a poem, but it does sound like a stereotypical surfer dude on a bad sitcom.
Kari, your poem made me giggle! As the mom of a now-9th grader, I agree that the final output does not sound like an 8th grader, but instead someone trying to imitate a surfer on a sitcom but then sometimes forgetting what they’re doing and writing more standard prose. The result is hilarious, as you said.
(p.s., if my 9th grader had written this poem, it would have included many more instances of the following “words”: ye, yo, rn, kk, af, and ikr) 🙂
fr, fr
I’m wondering if the word rhyme was triggering you getting that each of the 3 tries to NOT get rhyme?!
Why did you choose Bard over ChatGPT. Just curious…