About the Book
"A groundbreaking collaboration... Rich with mesmerizing phrasing that electrifies and transports... This book is from the future, a future that has arrived."
- Amy Catanzano, Associate Professor Of English In Creative Writing & Poet-in-residence, Wake Forest University
Can an AI find a poetic voice that is authentically its own? In Lily in a Codebox: The Search for AI's Poetic Voice, co-authors Lee Frankel-Goldwater and Eric Raanan Fischman embark on a genre-breaking, poetic experiment with artificial intelligence - one that blurs the lines between human intention and machine emergence.
The book introduces the Dickinson-Turing Test, a provocative thought experiment inspired by Emily Dickinson and Alan Turing, asking not whether AI can think, but whether it can move us through poetry. In pursuit of this challenge, the authors enter into an extended, respectful, and often surprising conversation with GPT, an AI language model, to explore co-creation across code, language, and emotional potential.
Through ASCII art, algorithmic verse, and invented forms such as Neo-Binary Visual Verse, Lily in a Codebox presents not just poems, but an entire conceptual framework for what it means to write with machines. The book reveals a shared poiesis - a generative making - where the process of creation becomes as meaningful as the output itself.
At once playful and profound, it poses bold questions: What might a poem for an AI audience look like? What are the implications of asking a machine to break all rules, and in doing so, invent new ones? Is GPT merely reflecting us, or reaching toward something of its own?
Far from being a technical manual, Lily in a Codebox is an invitation to curiosity, to uncertainty, and to the frontier of poetic possibility in a digital age. Equal parts lyrical and philosophical, it invites artists, technologists, and curious minds alike to enter the age of cyborg poetics - where code becomes verse, and algorithms dream in hexadecimal black.
About the Author :
Lee is a devoted social innovator and environmental educator. His work explores how co-created approaches to community engagement can improve the design, implementation, and assessment of trans-boundary environmental initiatives. Recent projects include co-creating a community-based research initiative with Boulder Food Rescue, co-leading community development projects in Costa Rica and Israel with The Sustainability Laboratory, and researching rural community learning models with the Earth Child Institute in Brazil. As an organizer of Writer's Block Collective, Lee is an active member and leader within the Boulder, Colorado poetry community, Lee holds a PhD in Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder, an MA in Environmental Conservation Education from NYU, and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Rochester. His senior thesis project was Computers Composing Music: An Artistic Utilization of Hidden Markov Models. Presently, he is a teaching professor at the University of Colorado Boulder focusing on novel teaching and learning in, about, and for the environment. Lee's long-term professional goals include building new programs in transformative environmental education and bridging gaps in cross-cultural understanding towards a more unified human society. He also likes to play on mountain tops and create poetry to read under the moonlight. Eric Raanan Fischman is an MFA graduate of Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Colorado. He is a board member and instructor for Beyond Academia Free Skool, which hosts monthly writing workshops at the Boulder Public Library as well as a 1-2 week free summer program, and has also taught workshops for Arapahoe Community College, Crestone Poemfest, the Firehouse Art Center in Longmont, and Mi Chantli in Boulder. His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Bombay Gin, The Mid-Atlantic Review, East Window Journal, Twenty Bellows, New Feathers Anthology, The Boulder Weekly newspaper, and many more. In 2023, he was one of two winners of Denver Quarterly's annual broadside competition, with 60 copies letterpressed. He currently curates the Boulder/Denver metro area poetry calendar at the Boulder Poetry Scene website. His first book of poetry, Mordy Gets Enlightened, was published through The Little Door in 2017 and reissued by Turnsol Editions in 2021. His second collection, Big Book of Love Poems About You in Particular, is forthcoming from Turnsol in 2026.
Review :
"A groundbreaking collaboration... Rich with mesmerizing phrasing that electrifies and transports... This book is from the future, a future that has arrived."
- Amy Catanzano, Associate Professor Of English In Creative Writing & Poet-in-residence, Wake Forest University
"This isn't another book about AI replacing poets, it's the story of creating something entirely new... a workshop in reimagining poetry itself.
- Susan Adams, Founder, Women in AI Colorado
