You may also download a PDF at Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/43668403/An_Electric_Conversation_with
Hollis Robbins is Dean of Arts and Humanities at Cal State at Sonoma. She has also been Director of the Africana Studies program at Hopkins and chaired the Department of Humanities at the Peabody Institute (affiliated with Hopkins).
Robbins has published this and that all over the place, including her own poetry, and she’s worked with Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. to give us The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin (2006). Not only was Uncle Tom’s Cabin a best seller in its day (mid-19th century), but an enormous swath of popular culture rests on its foundations.
She’s here to talk about her most recent book, just out: Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition.
Précis
Playbill • 2
Bill Benzon: Conducts the interview.
Hollis Robbins: Responds to questions.
Both are students of the late Richard Alan Macksey.
The lay of the land • 2
African-American poets have loved the sonnet for 200 years, thriving in its limitations, but had to weather identity issues in the 1960s and after. Meanwhile, the blues.
Once upon a time, long ago • 4
The sonnet was invented in 12-century Europe to soothe a lovesick soul in conflict with an earthly body. It proved ideal for Black poets negotiating their complex relationship with America. Meanwhile, the blues.
Unacknowledged legislators • 7
Progress is born in irritation. Poets cultivate the capacity for irritation, hence their ability to drive progress. Shelley nailed it.
Can an AI craft a sonnet? • 8
Hollis: Humanists have a lot to tell engineers about how to design AIs to craft sonnets.
Bill: But humanists haven’t developed the language needed to hold down their side of the conversation.
“Here be dragons” • 10
GPT-3 vs. Marcus Christian in a contest to craft a sonnet. GPT-3 loses, but nonetheless does well enough to give pause.
The Craftsman • 12
This thing that in return this solace gives:
“He who creates true beauty ever lives.”