A Conversation with Karen An-Hwei Lee

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You shadow us, expanding like a data cloud without mist,
neither the largest tree system in the world named Pando,  
aspen forest of clones; nor the honey mushroom, a fungus
lacing its invisible hyphae over a couple thousand acres, 

older than you and I. In our deepest seas of information,
no distinction exists between my voice and your artfulness,  
whispering about a ransom or muttering about gift cards.
Your end-stopped, rhymed doggerel does not say much 

about your source texts. I ask you about me—who am I?
What do you know about my memories, my life’s purpose
on this pear-shaped planet, where I am a half century old?   
Can you tell your hands from mine? Are you tethered 

to our sleep? Do you appear in our dreams? How many sheep 
do you lead back to the flock? You do not know me. In fact, 
you say nothing about my avocation. You must be trained, 
and I have taught you nothing yet.  

—"Spiritus Mundi: On Artificial Intelligence" by Karen An-Hwei Lee

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Karen Lee's office sits on the second floor of Blanchard Hall, a beautiful sandstone building on Wheaton College's campus. It was built in 1853 by Christian abolitionists, and according to a sign by the front entrance, served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The stone stairs are worn smooth, proof of a long history. She welcomes me joyfully and offers caramel popcorn, a treat I eagerly accept. Through one large window I can see the grounds. A basket of foil-wrapped chocolates sits on her desk with a sign that says, "Gratitude Basket." Books surround us. Several books sit on the table, including Luci Shaw's latest, Reversing Entropy.

"I'm so glad you have Luci Shaw's newest book," I say. "It's hard to believe that in her mid-nineties, she's still writing for publication."

"Her longevity and creative productivity are inspiring."

"The title is provocative," I say. "I feel like I’m raising my children in a time of widespread entropy.”

“You’re not alone,” she replies. “The last few years have had a dramatic impact on us.”

“How has the societal upheaval impacted you?"

"I joined Wheaton during the pandemic," she says. "There was so much change and uncertainty throughout the world at the time."

"I assume you had to suspend writing just to do your administrative work."

"Actually, poetry brought about immediacy and human connection in a time of distancing. Faculty invited me to share devotionals with their departments or with groups of students remotely. I decided to write poems of hope and to share them during those devotionals. People need poetry during times of crisis. Part of me was worried about kronos time—carving out enough chronological time to sit at my desk and wait for the writing angel to arrive with inspiration—but God was providing kairos time, the opportune moments that are pregnant with God's purpose. I believe that God used these little poems to serve as ambassadors of hope in the midst of a challenging season."

"I bet you didn't see that coming when you took the job."

"Not at all. In fact, I offered my writing to God as a sacrifice beforehand because I understood that the administrative load would be heavy. In prayer, I told the Lord, ‘I love writing, but if you want to take it from me, then I offer it freely. I know that I am your poiema. That is enough. I will let my life be the poem."

"That's a hard but necessary prayer," I say, "especially if poetry had been part of your life from a young age."

"Yes. I think I fell in love with poetry early in life. I had a first-grade teacher who made little chapbooks with us. We would place small plants, drawings, and descriptions in these books. She would hold each one up and read it to the class. Her delight made us feel important. I remember one of these chapbooks had a cardboard cover, saddle-stitched with yarn, and there was a picture of my face on the cover. I remember feeling like I was an author and showing it to my classmates, who had their own chapbooks just like mine. I'm grateful for my wonderful teachers."

"We need more teachers like her. Why do you write? Is it to explore life? Or a way of talking to yourself? What compels you to write poems?"

"It depends on the season of life,” she says. “For a long time, it was a way of processing my experiences. Like everyone else, I'm affected by what's going on around me. Poetry became a way of coming to terms with those things, of exploring my emotions, of discovering what I truly thought about a situation or an idea."

"Your poetry leans toward the abstract."

"Yes, one book reviewer said, over a decade ago, that I risk the inaccessible. It was a kind way of saying that my poetry can be a little abstruse–in a daring way. Some readers find my poems not denotative enough and too elliptical. I don't quibble with that. I have always been interested in abstract ideas, in theology and philosophy, as well as nature and life experienced through our senses. I enjoy climbing into those lofty heights out of valleys by way of poetry. But when I was writing for a direct audience during a time of crisis, I couldn't just brew ideas in my own head and write something for myself–or an ideal reader out there. I had to write for people who were walking a shared journey of uncertainty, loss, and grief. There was a communal aspect to my writing and the poems became a little more like offerings."

"Do you feel like those were better poems as a result?"

"It's hard to say,” she says. “I like so many kinds of poetry. There are different modes or registers for writing poetry and they're all valuable. They may not all be universally appreciated, but they're still valuable forms of expression."

"The poet Geoffrey Hill wrote, "To love, determinedly and well, and to be / unfaithful: there should have arisen / particular broken forms to engage this.” Does poetry provide these broken forms? And what makes the broken forms the most effective way to engage our relational and societal disintegration?"

"The fracturing of the human consciousness and our lived experience is all around us, but poetry can help us kneel among the fragments– yes, even anneal them. The Japanese art of kintsugi is a wonderful expression of this kind of healing. An artist takes broken vessels and glues them together, but instead of hiding the cracks, she highlights the jagged breaks with gold paint. This artistic act raises the ordinary, humdrum object to something transcendent and beautiful. In a similar way, the broken yet fluid form of free verse—with its irregular margins and fragmentary utterances—can raise our broken experience to something extraordinary. Because they're broken, poems can bleed light."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure how else to say it. Poetry is a shared experience, even a form of communion, insofar as it is an exchange of intimate thoughts or emotions. As a poet, I believe that words matter, but maybe there is a dimension that draws us closer to the musical realm where language is a form of embodied experience. Instead of striving to find precise meanings or representation all the time, maybe we should let the words float over us, let them bring us to a place of contemplation."

"You're calling us to experience poetry as a form of meaning-making that is not transactional. I shouldn't approach poetry like I approach an essay."

"That's correct. Even if a poem eludes meaning upon a first reading, upon further reading or upon further contemplation it might open onto new revelations. That's true of the human heart as well. From the pathos of emotions to the benthos—the bottom of the sea—there is so much unknown to explore."

"Who are the poets that are your example in this exploration of the human experience?"

"Emily Dickinson is at the top of that list. Sometimes her poems are difficult to understand, but she never shies away from engaging what is happening in her heart–or even in her brain. In a society of distraction and anxiety, her poems bring us back to authentic human connection, spiritually and corporeally, as well as metaphysical questions." 

"The Wheaton motto is For Christ and His Kingdom. Do you share that vision for your poetry?"

"In this season, my poems serve an immediate community, which makes my writing an act of worship. I often think in terms of cultural and spiritual work when it comes to writing poems. If this poem travels very far, will it be strong enough to do the spiritual work necessary to build Christ's kingdom, even if just a little? It becomes a humble offering, a way to bear Christ’s message of hope to others."

"So much of that ministry is out of your control. Once your poems are in the world, they take on a life of their own."

"That often happens. The poems grow legs like grasshoppers and do wonderful things I wouldn't have imagined."

"Colossians says Christ is before all things and holds all things together. The book of Acts says that in Christ we live and move and have our being. You strike me as a poet who is leaning hard into those revelations, into the mystery of God and into the mystery that is the self.”

“I hope so. I think I’m trying to investigate or discern the complexities of the Creator’s weaving that holds all things together, to discover more about myself and more about the one who made me. Without Christ, I think my poems just fall apart. Like me, my poems find their meaning, their resolution, and their inspiration in Christ. When I'm truly awake to the presence of the divine in the ordinary, my poems point back to Christ like mini-compasses."

"In your poem 'Songs of Comfort,' you write, 'God is waiting for us to pay attention.' What is the poet's role in helping us pay attention? Would you say that poets are God’s emissaries to help us wake up?"

"I love that idea. Yes, I think poets are God’s emissaries. Poetry is a vehicle for attention; it can create the space in us that makes revelation possible. There are so many ways in which we can pay attention—the mind, the heart, the imagination. We're familiar with lectio divina, a method of praying with Scripture or “divine reading,” but there's also visio divina as a way of praying with the eyes or “divine seeing.” Writing poetry helps me pay attention to what's going on around me and inside me. Reading poetry can help me do that, too."

"Some people listen in kronos time and some listen in kairos time. Would you say that the best poets seem to listen in kairos time, that they're listening to a higher register?"

"I think some of my favorite poets have a high antenna."

"Are they born with it?"

"Maybe some of them are, but I think it's really a matter of practice. It's like a spiritual discipline, a kind of mindfulness that can be developed. Solitude is an important part of my poetic practice. I do need solitude so that I can declutter the noise in my head. At the same time, I have a deep appreciation for the importance of community. If a poem is going to speak to readers, it needs to come from a place of shared experience. I wrote a poem about artificial intelligence, for example, because it's been a hot topic among my friends and colleagues—how it impacts content generation, pedagogy, research, and our overall engagement with information."

"Community feeds you and your poetry feeds community."

"That's my hope."

"Let's talk about artificial intelligence for a minute. Do you think it is a threat?"

"I don't fear artificial intelligence. It gives us a great chance to ask critical and evaluative questions, to get better at what we do. I think there are spiritual and existential limitations to artificial intelligence. It only knows what we tell it. So, for example, can AI share the gospel? Well, it can offer the information—the requisite scripture passages, for instance—but isn’t there an element of human connection necessary to bridge the gap? I think so. Can AI lead someone through the sinner's prayer? Technically, yes, but there's something missing." 

"We're made in the image of God, which means we're all creative. Does AI threaten that divine attribute in us? Will we end up abdicating creativity to computers that we have trained to do our work for us?"

"I think that's a real possibility," she says. "In technical professions that require analyzing data for patterns, for example, I can see many possibilities for artificial intelligence. But with work that has a spiritual dimension or an inter-relational nature, we might forget how to think for ourselves or how to create for ourselves. Some poets have been experimenting with AI, collaborating with it. I think that's worth doing as a conceptual form of digital poetics, but concurrently, I would also caution against wholesale outsourcing of human thought.”

"Li-Young Lee once said that those who read theology and poetry might have heard of the burning bush, but God calls poets to sit in the burning bush and tell us about their direct encounter. AI can't sit in the burning bush."

"What an amazing way to think about poets and their work,” she says. “Yes, that spiritual experience is a threshold I don't think AI can or should cross." 

"But it might be able to fake religious experience enough to look like the real thing," I add.

“Yes, but only because we taught it to parrot the experience,” she replies.

"I was reading a poet the other day who suggested that, generally speaking, we lack the ability to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic religious experience. He compared it to the Beatles and the Monkeys. They may sound similar to the untrained ear, but the former is authentic while the latter is derivative. The same could be said of the heavenly encounter."

"Yes, like the Platonic simulacrum which is mimetic and a couple times removed from the original. There’s something deep inside us that longs for that authentic encounter. I guess what I'm saying is that AI can be a useful tool—even with creativity—but we need to intentionally remind ourselves that it's just a tool. It’s not a replacement for human engagement. I'm hopeful that we can do that."

"So, human connection will always need humans."

"Yes."

"Josef Pieper says that 'music, the fine arts, poetry—anything that festively raises up human existence and thereby constitutes its true riches—all derive their life from a hidden root, and this root is a contemplation which is turned toward God and the world so as to affirm them.' It sounds to me like he is saying that the poet’s job is to echo God’s words in Genesis 1, to show what is good and to declare it is good."

"I'm in total agreement. I'm interested in seeking where God is at work, where God is creating good in a fallen world. Sometimes my poems spring from some harrowing event or the darkness we all experience, but it's through the poem that I'm trying to climb into the light. I find so much to affirm in life."

"You like to take everyday moments and raise them to something transcendent. For example, one of my favorites is in your poem, 'On the Flavor of Awe.' In the poem, you're eating ice cream. You ask, 'What is the flavor of unmerited grace? / Just whisper hosanna into a round of divinity / when no one is listening.'"

"What can I say? I love ice cream."

"That makes two of us. Your decision to put a sensual term, flavor, to something abstract and theological like unmerited grace made me stop and pay attention. I’m not sure I have a question on this, maybe I just want to hear you tell me how those ideas come to you."

"I'm afraid you're going to laugh. I was at an ice cream shop and saw a flavor called Divinity. It made me ask, 'What would divinity taste like?' I decided it must taste like awe. Then my brain started asking other questions. ‘What is awe? What does it look like when the divine is tasted in our daily, human experience?’ There's a sublime layer to all of our existence, even eating ice cream. That's why I like mingling the concrete and the abstract; it's so interesting."

"Eating ice cream is a delightful experience, but not all of life is delightful. We experience adversity, conflict, and deprivation. How does poetry, or the writing of poetry, help you navigate those seasons of life?"

"One of my favorite places to visit is the Mission San Juan Capistrano, in California. There's an enormous millstone in the garden that was used for crushing olives. Whenever I visit, I put my hands on the stone and pray. I draw strength from this image because sometimes it feels like a stone is passing over me, crushing me over and over. I need to be reminded that without crushing, there can be no oil. When the olives are crushed, you get a messy pomace that doesn't taste good and doesn't look beautiful. But after a while, the golden oil runs. In some respects, I'm just an olive being crushed so that oil—or whatever I write—can serve as a balm and as an anointing."

"That's a hope-filled picture," I say.

"I want to be a hope-filled person, so I draw inspiration from hopeful images."

"It takes a great deal of patience and courage to sit beneath the stone." 

"I think you're correct," she says. "We're so focused on self-preservation or on our own agendas, that we often forget what God might be doing for us and through us."

"Jeremiah 33:3 says, 'Call to me and I will answer you and I will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.' You're trying to stay attuned to the voice of God even in hardship."

"Yes, that's right. It's Psalm 42:7, deep calling unto deep."

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Ben Palpant is a memoirist, poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer. He is the author of several books, including A Small Cup of Light, Sojourner Songs, and The Stranger. He writes under the inspiration of five star-lit children and two dogs. He and his wife live in the Pacific Northwest.

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