Poetry and Poststructuralism: An AI-Powered Analysis

Hello everyone,

This blog is about an innovative lab activity that brings together creativity, critical thinking, and technology in the study of literature. Inspired by Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, the activity encourages students to look beyond fixed meanings in a text and explore its hidden contradictions and multiple interpretations. it is assigned by Dr.Dilip Barad sir. we have to follow steps which are given in this worksheet:-Click Here

Step 1:Use ChatGPT to generate two poems

• Each poem should be 3 to 4 stanzas, a sonnet, or a short poem in iambic pentameter or heroic couplet (10-12 lines).

• Choose a topic such as Monsoon, Rain, Love, Death, Nature, Flowers, Forest, Literature, Existentialism, Digital Humanities, or any other classical or famous literary text (e.g., metaphysical poems, The Waste Land, Waiting for Godot, Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Great Gatsby).

For this step, I had been given prompt to ChatGPT, Generate a poem based on the theme of monsoon and the second one is based on Existentialism. 

"Monsoon's Embrace"

The skies grow dark, then burst with silver light,

A weeping joy that breaks the summer's blight.

The parched earth drinks the gift with open mouth,

Reviving roots that cracked beneath the drouth.

The peacock spins and sings in feathered glee,

While rivers swell and race toward the sea.

Each drop that falls is nature’s tender kiss,

A whispered vow of storm-born, leafy bliss.

The fields awake in hues of green and gold,

As tales of rain in farmer's hearts are told.

The thunder drums a song upon the plain,

A mighty ode to life renewed by rain.

The scent of petrichor perfumes the air,

A fragrant sign that grace is everywhere.

Though tempests rage and lightning splits the sky,

The monsoon hums a truth no drought can dry.

Step 2: Study Deconstruction

• Provide general information about Poststructuralism and Deconstruction using sources like Peter Barry's Beginning Theory, M.H. Abrams, and Wikipedia.

• Prompt ChatGPT to study this information.

For this step I had been given a pdf of Peter Berry's Beginning Theory, and prompt like this, From this pdf read the concept of Poststructuralism and Deconstruction Theory, without adding beyond information from this pdf study it thoroughly and save it.

Step 3: Analyze First Poem

• Provide ChatGPT with Peter Barry's example of the deconstructive study of Dylan Thomas’s poem using a three-step model (Verbal Stage, Textual Stage, and Linguistic Stage).

• Input relevant information from Barry's book.

• Prompt ChatGPT to analyze your first poem using the three-step model.

Response given by ChatGpt: Analysis of the poem

The Verbal Stage: Contradictions within Words or Phrases

At this level, we look at binary oppositions and internal tensions in key phrases.

“Weeping joy”: Pairs joy with weeping a contradiction. Is the rain a source of life or sorrow? Joy or grief?

“Gift” and “Tempest”: Rain is called both a "tender kiss"  and a "tempest". Is it gentle or violent?

“Thunder drums a song”: Is thunder musical and celebratory or threatening and terrifying?

Each phrase affirms and negates its own imagery. The poem praises monsoon's vitality, yet its language (weeping, rage, tempest) also echoes destruction.

The Textual Stage: Contradictions within the Structure of the Poem

Now we consider tensions in the larger structure and argument of the poem.

The poem’s overall arc celebrates renewal, but its structure depends on oscillation between life and violence.

While it starts by describing rain as "weeping joy", it ends with "tempests rage" and "lightning splits the sky" not a resolution but an escalation.

The poem repeatedly personifies nature"peacock sings," "earth drinks," "fields awake"—yet in doing so, it romanticizes what could also be random chaos.

Thus, while the structure pretends to offer harmonious celebration, it contains within it the seeds of unrest, ambiguity, and instability—echoing the very nature of monsoon.

The Linguistic Stage: Unstable Meaning of Language Itself

This final stage focuses on the slipperiness of meaning in the language itself.

Words like “kiss,” “vow,” “grace,” “truth” evoke deeply human, even divine, qualities—but in a natural phenomenon. Is it metaphor or misplaced projection?

“Monsoon hums a truth no drought can dry” (L14): What truth? The line gestures toward profundity but never specifies it. The signifier "truth" floats, detached from any fixed signified.

“Nature’s tender kiss”: How do we verify or define tenderness in a storm? The phrase defers clarity and invites subjective interpretation.

Language here doesn’t just describe; it performs illusion, gesturing toward emotional certainty while undermining it with ambiguity.

Conclusion: What Deconstruction Reveals

Deconstructivly read, the poem appears to celebrate monsoon, but it also unravels its own message: It romanticizes nature while also suggesting its unpredictability and destructiveness.

The poem's form (heroic couplets) implies order, yet its language destabilizes that very sense of control.

Ultimately, it shows that meaning is not fixed: is the monsoon a savior or destroyer? Is rain grace or grief?

Deconstruction doesn’t destroy the poem it reveals that it was always already unstable.

This second poem is based on the theme of Existentialism.

2.“A Room Without a Map”

I wake beneath a sky that holds no name,

no script etched on the stars, no voice above.

The silence is not cruel but deep,

and asks me what I mean to do with it.

I walk through days that echo with my tread,

no purpose carved in stone, no fate assigned.

The weight is mine, the path is mine to choose

the cost of freedom wrapped in human skin.

Still, I build with meaning what I can,

out of fleeting joys and stubborn will.

If life is brief and nothing waits beyond,

then let my being burn with what I am.

Step 4: Analyze Second Poem

• Prompt ChatGPT to study Catherine Belsey’s analyses of "The Red Wheelbarrow,"

"In a Station of the Metro," and "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?" from her

book on Poststructuralism.

• Provide clear instructions on your expectations for the analysis.

• Prompt ChatGPT to analyze your second poem based on the study.

For this step, I had been uploaded on ChatGPT pdf of Catherine Besley's book Poststructuralism a very short introdution. read page no 19,20,21 concept of Catherine Belsey’s analyses of "The Red Wheelbarrow," "In a Station of the Metro,".

Response given by ChatGpt: Analysis of the poem

1. Binary Oppositions Unravelled

Deconstruction begins by questioning binary structures that literature (and philosophy) sets up. In this poem, we find:

a).Name / Nameless

“A sky that holds no name” destabilizes the assumed metaphysical need for divine or cosmic naming—the logocentric idea that language or meaning begins in divine presence or purpose.

b).Purpose / Freedom

The second stanza creates tension between purpose (teleology) and freedom (existential agency). But Derrida would argue that “freedom” is never free from the system of meaning it's trying to escape—freedom depends on the absence of assigned meaning, which paradoxically becomes a new structure.

c).Meaning / Nothingness

The phrase “I build with meaning what I can” privileges meaning, but “If life is brief and nothing waits beyond” introduces nothingness, which deconstructs that very effort.

Deconstruction exposes that the poem tries to center “meaning,” but this center is constantly being deferred echoing Derrida’s différance (difference + deferral).

2. The Slippage of Signifiers

Let’s deconstruct the signifiers at play:

“Sky that holds no name”

Sky is a traditional symbol of God, destiny, or transcendence. But here, it holds “no name,” evacuating presence.

The signifier “sky” slips away from transcendence and becomes a silent void—a Derridean trace of presence, rather than presence itself.

“Fate assigned” vs. “path is mine”

“Fate” suggests pre-written script. “Mine” suggests ownership. But Derrida would argue that “mine” is already haunted by what it excludes—fate, social construction, language itself.

Hence, the self becomes unstable, written not by inner essence but by signifiers within a system it didn’t create.

“Burn with what I am”

This sounds assertive—an affirmation of being. But “what I am” is an impossible closure. Derrida says the subject is a writing, not a stable center.

To “burn with what I am” is to try to assert presence in a system that only allows presence as a trace, not as origin.

The Metaphysics of Presence Deconstructed

Western thought, Derrida argues, is founded on the metaphysics of presence—the belief that presence (truth, self, meaning) is the origin and goal.

“Let my being burn with what I am”

This is an attempt to anchor being in self—to assert presence. But if the “I” is already a linguistic effect, a shifter (as Barthes noted), then the line is haunted by absence.

“Being” is invoked as essence, but language constantly defers what “being” is.

“What I am” is not a final signified, only a chain of previous signifiers—none of which hold meaning outside their difference from others.

So the poem, in trying to reclaim selfhood and meaning, only reveals their structural impossibility in any final form.

 Conclusion: What Deconstruction Reveals

This poem, on the surface, presents an existential assertion of selfhood, freedom, and meaning in a meaningless world.

But Derridean deconstruction shows that:

The language of assertion (“I am”) relies on metaphysical assumptions it cannot justify.

The freedom it claims is already structured by a system of signs.

Its attempts at closure (“let my being burn...”) are undone by linguistic deferral, ambiguity, and absence.

Ultimately, the poem both affirms and undoes itself—not through error, but by the very logic of language Derrida exposes.

References:

Barad, Dilip. “Poetry and Poststructuralism: An AI-Powered Analysis.” Lab Activity for M.A. English Students, July 2024. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382114259_Poetry_and_Poststructuralism_An_AI-Powered_Analysis . Accessed 05 July 2025.

Belsey, Catherine. Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2022.

Berry, Peter. Beginning Theory, 3/E. Viva Books Private Limited, 2010.

ChatGPT - Monsoon Heroic Couplet.” ChatGPT, chatgpt.com/share/68691fa2-f9c0-8011-984d-86ad2917e470 . Accessed 5 July 2025.

Thank You!!!