By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
I hadn’t yet read any of the poems in George Eklund’s new book, Toward a Credo, when we sat down to chat. If I had, I might have asked different questions. I might have asked about the reoccurring mentions of Portugal. Or about the reflections on aging and experience we see in the titular poem; where the speaker begins by telling us, “I watch the gray waves of my face, And imagine the letters, I will never write.”
Instead, chatting over a cup of coffee at the Olive Hill Dairy Queen, we discussed his thoughts on the new book, his past work, the impact of large language models and generative AI on the future of literature and artistic expression, the inherent poetry of daily life in Appalachia, and the discipline of writing in general.
Toward a Credo is Eklund’s third full length book of poetry, though he’s published several shorter chapbooks and other smaller publications, and I asked him about the relevance of the title.
“Credo is an old word,” he said. “Latin. Creed and credo are related.”
While those two words are used as nouns – a credo or creed being a vow or statement of beliefs – the original Latin was a verb, he noted, meaning “I believe.”
“So, the whole idea of a credo,” Eklund said, “I’m very process oriented in the way I do art, and the way I think and write, and the whole idea of writing as a way to bring oneself closer to a system of belief, whether it be aesthetic or spiritual or political… I like that whole idea of writing as a way to take us toward a discovery, or call it a creed, a belief, the truth, the breakthrough of the system, whatever. So, I think that maybe that’s an aesthetic kind of statement about how I feel about writing, and maybe art in general.”
He said that this is a theme that he feels is reflected throughout the poems in the book.
“I think so,” he said, “because I think each poem, really, is a part of that process. It’s a search. The whole idea of a poem as a process of searching.”
He explained that the idea of the essay was another theme that repeated itself throughout the book.
“Some of my poems are called essays. Essay on a River, or Essay on a Child in Bed, or whatever. And the whole idea of the poem as essay appeals to me because the essay in its essence is a piece of writing which is an experiment. A search. Essais, in French, means to search. To go on a search to find out what’s going to happen.”
He explained that the individual who invented the essay as a literary form, Michel de Montaigne, did just that.
“That’s what he did. He was the rich guy, who sat by a window, had a big library around him, and said, ‘I think I want to essai. See where my brilliant mind goes.’ So, that’s a kind of return. I like to return back to the whole idea of the poem as a journey, as a search, as an experiment. In Spanish it’s ensayo, means a rehearsal. Each poem is a kind of rehearsal or a practice or an experiment or an etude (a study), or a part of the process, the practice and process to find the creed. The discovery. The answer.”
This idea of writing as a form of discovery and reflection inevitably led to discussion of generative AI and the impact that is having, and will continue to have, on writing – particularly for educators.
“I’ve had these thoughts in my head every day, especially with the rise of AI to me it is, well, it’s going to be great and it’s going to be terrifying. It’ll save us and kill us all at once. It’s the paradox. But I’ve already had some weird experiences with AI”
While Eklund, who is a retired educator, no longer has to worry about students turning in AI generated content, the same can’t be said for his wife, who is still teaching.
“Laura can’t stand it,” he said. “She has to go through, and she uses special apparatuses to look for plagiarized work every time she has a writing assignment.”
He said he’s been amazed by how well the algorithm can generate content – even matching his own style – when the proper prompts were utilized by his friends who shared the content with him. And while there are legitimate concerns about its impacts, especially on work in the arts and entertainment fields, there is one thing that AI can never replace, and that’s the use of writing as a tool for self-reflection and growth.
“I believe in such notions as the soul,” Eklund said. “And I don’t think AI can replicate the soul. The whole idea of language connects us to the soul in a way, it connects us to ourselves, in ways that other things can’t.”
It’s part of that lifelong journey of finding meaning in our lives; of making sense of it all as we move toward our eventual end. Or, as the final stanza of Toward a Credo’s title poem reads, “Gather some paper and mark it, And pass it around, And pass away.”
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
