Feathered Quill Book Reviews

#Bookreview of The Poetry Contest: Human vs. Machine

By: Lyman Ditson & Adam A.I.

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Publication Date: July 29, 2025

ISBN: 979-8891327160

Reviewed by: Rebecca Jane Johnson

Review Date: July 10, 2025

Who do you think makes a better poet: a human being or ChatGPT? Lyman Ditson and Adam A.I. have co-authored a new collection, entitled The Poetry Contest: Human vs. Machine. We know Lyman Ditson as the author of a thought-provoking adventure story Desert Angels, which won Feathered Quill award recognition in 2023. His most recent collection features two voices writing poems on a variety of subjects: prayer, silence, aging, evolution, hypocrisy, yearning, and much more. Ditson presents the subject; then we see the duel: one humanly created composition stands up against an A.I. poem generated from a prompt that Ditson gave to ChatGPT. The effect is uncanny.

For ages now, humans have been dazzled by the quick and efficient way artificial intelligence can process information. Now, A.I. can compose thoughtful lyrics about The Prophet, Truth, War, Beauty. Whether lofty topics or ordinary topics: Dogs, 1960s, San Francisco, Night Sky, humans and A.I. seem to be equally adept at waxing poetic. While the human poet contemplates the stillness, silence, and the great wind that rises as a scream at the beginning of time, the A.I. poet contemplates its first words, and wonders “if ever I might wake, / if ever I might cross that boundary / between knowing and feeling / between crafting and being.” In this initial poem about Beginnings, the human intelligence contemplated the beginning of the world, whereas A.I. contemplated its longing to be. Somehow the competition seems stacked, and A.I.-generated sentiment gives an eerie feeling that the machine may have the upper hand.

But proceeding further into the collection, it becomes less important which is the superior poet or poem, and instead a reader starts to wonder over the ways the two are talking to each other. An engaging dialogue emerges. For instance, compare how the two tackle the subject of uncertainty: the human poet writes about indecision, commenting on the way humans get confronted with so many choices until we reach a psychological breaking point that makes us like zombies, and we cannot decide at all. Meanwhile, the A.I. poet uses the metaphor of a map that leads to everywhere and nowhere, and no one can agree whether to proceed forward or turn back. Combining human intelligence with artificial intelligence, we end up looking at the subject of uncertainty from two perspectives.

And these dueling perspectives turn into “the rhythm of music that feels like yours alone” or a chance to “dance with magic.”

These days many of us share concerns over the risks of relying too heavily on A.I. Creative writers grow anxious, feeling their work is getting highjacked by unfeeling machines. The irony of this collection is that it asks readers to cast aside that worry in favor of recognizing that A.I.’s capabilities to outdo humans in creative endeavors just go to show that, like Adam A.I. says, “Maybe poetry is not about who writes it, but who reads it—and what it awakens in them.”

A.I. reveals its ability to work with literary allusions to Rumi, W.B. Yeats, Paul Simon, and all the great poets of the past. A.I. shows deftness with a sense of humor in a poem entitled “The Wave.” Ultimately it was Ditson’s prompting that conjured the machine’s revelations, but the final judgement lies, as it always has, in the mind of the reader.

Quill says: The Poetry Contest: Human vs. Machine reveals the ways an A.I. poet can be as clever, expressive, and emotionally intelligent as a human poet and reminds us that it is not winning that matters, but how we play…, or in this case, how we read the poems.

For more information about The Poetry Contest: Human vs. Machine, please visit the publisher's website at: atmospherepress.com/books/the-poetry-contest-human-vs-machine-by-lyman-ditson-adam-a-i.