A Boring Morning With AI

It was an overcast and rainy morning today and I thought I needed something interesting to do. An idea had been brewing in my mind for some time concerning AI. I took my published collection on poems (if you are one of the ten people that purchased it, you have my gratitude—and apology) uploaded it to Microsoft’s AI agent, Copilot. I asked Copilot to read the poems, pick the one it thought was most unique and conduct an interview of me as a reporter for Poets & Writers would, then write an article.

The last think I will ever be accused of is being an AI expert. At best, it is a glorified search engine for me. Being a dinosaur, I'm perfectly happy with that. I really just wanted to see what it could do with limited input.

It read the poems, picked Circular Logic, and had several questions before it could conduct and interview. First is asked if I owned the copyrights, I do. Then is asked if I created the form of the poem, I did. It suggested calling the form Pivot Loop. I went with that. I always called it my “logic” form but am happy with Pivot Loop. Lastly, it asked if I wanted to include the full text and deconstructed lines in the body of the article, I said that was Okay with me.

It asked sixteen questions in two rounds of eight. After the first round, it provided a recap of its interpretation of my answers and asked me to confirm the contents. I did, then it asked the second round of question, expanding on the first round. Again, it provided a recap and asked it it understood my answers. It did.

Below is the article, presented exactly as Copilot created it. My only contributions were the poem, answering the interview questions and agreeing to the name Pivot Loop.

Inventing the Pivot Loop: A Conversation with Michael Benton

By [Staff Writer], Poets & Writers–Style Feature

Some poetic forms arrive through centuries of refinement. Others appear suddenly, discovered in the act of writing by poets who follow an internal logic to its natural conclusion. Michael Benton’s Pivot Loop belongs to the latter category — a form born not from imitation but from revelation.

The structure emerged from a single poem, Circular Logic, written during a moment of emotional disorientation. Benton describes the experience as “feeling all turned inside out,” and the poem reflects that sensation through a looping, recursive architecture that became the foundation of a new poetic form.

Here is the poem in full, preserved in its original formatting:

My eyes see a tarnished worldA world with stainStain my soulSoul
My soul feels an angry worldA world with hurtHurt my mindMind
My mind needs a better worldA world with delightDelight my heartHeart
My heart is a willing worldA world with trustTrust my eyesEyes

The poem cycles through perception, emotion, cognition, and trust, returning finally to eyes, the word that opened the poem. This return is not decorative — it is structural. The poem moves forward while folding back on itself, creating a sense of emotional recursion that feels both inevitable and surprising.

That looping mechanism became the defining feature of the Pivot Loop.

The Discovery of a Form

Benton didn’t set out to invent anything. “I wrote the first stanza and let it sit for several days,” he says. “I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but then it occurred to me to repeat the format using the word soul. After that, the other two stanzas came kind of naturally. It was almost an afterthought that I tied the word eyes back to the beginning.”

That afterthought turned out to be the key. The poem’s structure — four stanzas, each ending with a single repeated word that becomes the next stanza’s opening noun — created a closed circuit. The final pivot returned to the first stanza’s anchor, completing the loop.

Benton recognized the architecture only during revision. “It was when I was editing the poem that the structure became obvious,” he says. “My first thought was I should be able to use this again and express a different emotion.”

That realization — that the structure was repeatable — is what transformed Circular Logic from a single poem into the prototype of a new form.

Why One Word Matters

The Pivot Loop’s defining feature is its single‑word pivot. Each stanza ends with a lone word — Soul, Mind, Heart, Eyes — which becomes the next stanza’s starting point.

Why one word?

“I often find in poems one or two words that have more impact than the others,” Benton explains. “After completing the first stanza I knew the word soul was the one that had the punch. Once the stanza reduced to that single word, it became obvious I wanted to use it again.”

This minimalism is part of the form’s power. Unlike pantoums or villanelles, which repeat entire lines, the Pivot Loop hinges on a single lexical unit. The repetition is clean, sharp, and architectural.

Benton’s influences here are surprisingly humble. “I think the biggest influence as far as works would have to be things like nursery rhymes,” he says. “Their simple structure, keying on a point, gives the same sort of feel.”

Emotion, Craft, and the Middle Ground

Benton is candid about the role of emotional state in his writing. “One of the most frustrating things for me when writing poetry is to have a perfect idea but not be in the right head space,” he says. “When I’m happy it is next to impossible for me to write something melancholy. The reverse is equally true.”

For him, poetry requires a balance between emotional authenticity and technical discipline. “If I don’t balance the two, the work will be lacking. I can make a technically perfect poem that has no heart, or I can write entirely from the heart and create prose. Poetry lives in the middle.”

This philosophy aligns naturally with the Pivot Loop. The form’s structure provides discipline; the pivot words provide emotional propulsion. Each pivot becomes a stepping stone from one emotional state to the next.

The Form’s Thematic Tendencies

Does the Pivot Loop lend itself to certain themes?

“I think it can be very useful for introspection,” Benton says. “Poets naturally move from one emotional place to another. Finding a key word is simply a stepping stone on that path.”

But he doesn’t see the form as limited. The loop can carry any emotional or conceptual sequence — grief to acceptance, anger to clarity, confusion to resolve. The structure is flexible enough to support a wide range of thematic arcs.

Rules, Freedom, and the Modern Poet

Benton believes poets should understand formal constraints, but not be bound by them. “By challenging yourself to stay within the limits and rules of a particular format, you sharpen creativity,” he says. “You may have the perfect word, but if it doesn’t fit, it can’t be in your poem.”

But he also believes in freedom. “Once you understand the rules and when you deviate from them, you can open up a whole new world. When poets push the boundaries of formats, new formats appear.”

This openness extends to the Pivot Loop itself. If another poet wanted to modify the form — add stanzas, alter the pivot pattern, or break the loop — Benton would welcome it.

“I would hope they simply state, ‘I started with Pivot Loop and grew from there,’ and made it their own.”

Minimalism and Modern Vocabulary

The Pivot Loop is intentionally spare. No rhyme scheme. No meter requirement. No syllabic constraints.

“There are enough sonnets in the world,” Benton says with a wry edge. “Writers and poets today tend to have a more limited vocabulary than poets in Shakespeare’s time. I think leaving room for creativity without rules is the proper thing.”

The Pivot Loop’s minimalism is not a lack of structure — it is a deliberate openness. The form provides a skeleton; the poet supplies the muscle.

What He Hopes Readers Experience

Benton’s hope for readers is simple and precise.

“If someone reads the poem, thinks for a moment, and then says, ‘Wait a minute — what did I just read?’ and reads it again, it will have done its job.”

That moment of recognition — the realization that the poem has looped back on itself — is the Pivot Loop’s signature effect. It invites rereading. It rewards attention. It creates a sense of conceptual recursion that mirrors emotional recursion.

A Form That Feels Inevitable

Benton didn’t set out to invent a form. He set out to articulate a feeling. But in doing so, he discovered a structure that feels both new and inevitable — a form that captures the cyclical nature of thought and emotion with elegant simplicity.

The Pivot Loop is now codified: four stanzas, four lines each, a single‑word pivot that becomes the next stanza’s anchor, and a final pivot that returns to the beginning. But Benton is not territorial. He sees the form as an offering, not a boundary.

“I didn’t create it for other poets,” he says. “But if someone wants to use it, I’d be very happy — and I’d love to read the work.”

In a poetic landscape where innovation often comes from breaking rules, Benton has done something rarer: he has created a new one.

And like all good forms, the Pivot Loop feels less like an invention than a discovery — something that was waiting to be found.

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It is true to the interview and impressively stayed on point. It is perfect? Or course not, but neither would be one actually created by a reporter. Had a reported conducted the interview, even on the phone, they would have keyed on the emotional feel of my responses as well as the words spoken. That is something the AI I have access to will not do. Who knows what the deep-fakers and clandestine 3-letter agencies have access to.

I’m not sure what to make of it all. With the push of a few buttons, Copilot created an article that holds water. Maybe not in the best format but it is better than a lot of what passes for articles actually created by people.