Do You Remember Being Born? by Sean Michaels

Do You Remember Being Born? No.

Do you remember watching in horror as your quirky, cape-wearing, smells-like-an-eraser, poet friend, a secret Niagara of feeling, tried to hold down a job at a tech company? Yes.

In Sean Michaels’ Do You Remember Being Born?, a poet has a shot at buying a house for their child. The catch is that the poet, based on Marianne Moore, has to compose a poem with a tech company’s well-trained AI bot. For a novelist whose previous book (The Wagers) had vigilantes stealing luck in a literal, granular form from the too-lucky of the world, the idea of a poet churning out a livelihood for themselves feels like Michael’s most fantastical formulation yet. It’s also his best book.

I don’t remember the amount of money the tech company plans on giving her because I lost track of the zeroes on the left side of the decimal. What I do remember is the moment when it seems like all of Marian’s new money might do away with their financial precarity. I also remember the strong, grisaille tone of the flashbacks, like when we see younger Marian lock her child out of her study to write poems.

Art in the age of child reproduction is thankfully more alluring to Michaels’ than the book’s anodyne billionaire tech mogul and the implications of AI on the world of art. That many people “can't tell the difference” between an AI poem and a real person’s poem shouldn’t be alarming yet. Think of how long we’ve lived in a world where most people can’t tell a good human poem from a bad human one.

- RDA

DNF - I may seek out this book at a later date but I found the ebook difficult to work through. The presentation style didn't motivate me to want to pick up the book again even though I was interested in the plot.

I loved this novel. Marian, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, is asked to come to San Francisco to write a poem with Charlotte, a poetry bot. At 75, Marian, is not as tech savvy as her son son, Courtney, or many of her readers. The novel is a conversation between Marian and Charlotte, as well as a dive into Marian’s life. Will this be our future? There is currently a legal case against AI-generated novels. Interesting future.

Fascinating story. Highly entertaining and interesting. Provided an interesting introduction to AI publishing.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book even though I think it was cleverly written and took a good look at an unusual life. It is an unusual premise about an author asked to write a poem in collaboration with a computer but it somehow works.

I did not enjoy this book, It started slow and never picked up. I read to 150 pages and was not able to finish it.

I am not on to not finish books (this is literally my second of the year) but it was very contemporary and I wasn’t able to get into it enough to enjoy it.

This is a fascinating book, and extremely timely, given how quickly AI is becoming central to any academic/creative discussion.

An aging famous poet (and yes, I did think of Margaret Atwood, although Marianne Moore is apparently the inspiration for the character) is asked to collaborate with an AI entity to write a poem. She will be paid a very large amount of money for the project, and takes the contract in order to help her son buy a house.

The book raises a great many questions about what creativity is. Where is it born in our brains? Can a computer truly be independently creative, or is that a gift only given to us as humans. As academic institutions struggle with how to navigate AI and AI-created work, this books is a fascinating meditation on what it means to write.

There is a lot to recognize in the book. The Silicon Valley mega-corporations, the giant media campaign around the writing project, the somewhat baffled famous author trying to navigate her discussions with her computer counterpart.

The language is beautiful. Sean Michaels writes amazing descriptions, and the meandering backstory of Marian is worth getting lost in. The scene where Marian goes to a party with a group of young poets is one that I kept going back to, because the language perfectly captured the mood.

This is a worthwhile read for anyone wrestling with AI and ethics and creativity. It may raise more questions than it answers, but good writing usually does. 4 stars.

Thanks for Penguin and NetGalley for an e-arc. This came out in early September, so should be accessible in multiple formats at your favourite bookstore or library.

Contemporary Fiction | Adult
Do You Remember Being Born?, by Sean Michaels (2023)

In a remarkably timely novel, 75-year-old poet Marian Ffarmer receives an offer (through snail mail!) from a Silicon Valley company to write the world’s first poem collaboration between a human and an artificial intelligence. She accepts, wanting to give the windfall to her son to help him buy a home, then flies from New York City to the west coast, to be ensconced in a room with a keyboard and a screen. There she and Charlotte, the AI, get to know each other and start creating. They have just seven days to complete the project. The novel is a fascinating imagining of the process that would see a renowned poet (Ffarmer is based on real-life poet Marianne Moore) work under bizarre, artificial conditions (oh yes that pun is fully intended!) – a deadline, a sterile environment, and an invisible partner. A partner who has written hundreds of thousands of poems, but seems childlike in her (its? their?) questions and perspectives, then suddenly offers wisdom that staggers the reader. The book is also a memoir of sorts, as Marian reviews her life and the choices she has made as a daughter, a lover, and a mother. I did not find her a sympathetic character, to be honest; she’s sometimes creepy, but she’s brutally honest and raw in her emotions, which makes her fascinating. Canadian Michaels also explores the emerging relationship between the artist and AI, and the concept of the artist as a solitary creator, something he calls <a href=”https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thenextchapter/sean-michaels-examines-the-tense-relationship-between-artists-and-ai-in-new-novel-1.6960514″>”a bit of a mirage”</a>. Artists are inspired by nature, by family, by politics – why not by ChatGPT? Oh, and the poetry that Marian and Charlotte write is a collaboration itself between author Michaels and an early version of ChatGPT, which perhaps contributes almost as much as my own ignorance of poetry to my difficulty in understanding it. That part dragged for me, I admit. I would have liked more space devoted to the ethical issues around AI, but Michaels leaves that to the reader to reflect on, which perhaps is what we should all be doing anyway. My thanks to Random House Canada for the digital reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123856309

This is a book unlike any I have read before! I enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was a very interesting concept, especially with A.I's growing relevance in our lives. This is very different from the type of books I usually read, but I found the story gripping. My only gripe is that I found it difficult to distinguish whether the main character, or the A.I. was typing at certain points, but this could be due to formatting issues with my ARC.
This book is on the verge of being Sci-fi, but with our quickly changing lives it is not that far off from reality.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for providing me with an ARC in exchange for review.

I really enjoyed this book. You follow esteemed poet, Marian Ffarmer, as she collaborates with a new AI poetry machine in LA for 1 week while working for "The Company". Throughout the book, Marian brings you on an exploration of their past, focusing on family dynamic with their mother, ex husband, and son, and how those relationships relate to her work as a poet both in the past and presently.

Overall, this was a very solid book about an interesting topic that is likely to start happening due to the surge of AI capabilities as of late (or already happens?). I enjoyed reading this novel, albeit slowly at times, and will be on the lookout for others from Sean Michaels in the future.

"Do you remember being born?' the software asked me.
'No. I don't think anyone does." (Michaels)
This book scared me. I didn't know what I was getting into when I picked it up but I was hooked, especially as a young writer at the beginning of her career. This book questions every writers biggest fear; is Al able to do our job better and more efficiently than we can? Is it still necessary for humans to create art? To write poetry?
I guess you will have to read this book to find out the answer, but I think that Marion proves time and time again that Charlotte is just a machine; and she, at her core, can only emulate what humanity has spent hundreds of years perfecting. She does not have original ideas in the realm of artistic creation, and there is comfort in that lesson.
Even when, to the public-to the untrained eye-the lines of human and machine are blurred, to Marion, the only real poetry comes from her and Morel.
However, my fear truly transpired after reading the author's note. I simply couldn't believe what I was reading, that it was all truly real. I didn't think it possible today, albeit likely possible 10 years from now. I guess it was very creative but also scary. I won't give too much away however as I strongly suggest you read this book for yourself.

Where do I start with this lovely gem of a book? Let's start with the easy to follow plot to see if you even want to read it, shall we? A poet looking for that one last adrenaline juice from writing a book of poems takes on the task of writing a book with artificial intelligent as its co-author. This spry young lady is far beyond her best years, but up for the challenge it presents to her, the only thing stopping her is she is getting up there in age and she hates technology. They are obviously so far beneath us it shouldn't matter anyway!

As for my review, I will keep it short and sweet so that A.I. can not copy my writing or my personality or my browser history. But, to say I liked it would be an understatement. No, it was not perfect, but it was darn near close. Any the only real complaint I have is that it felt clunky at times, but the afterword explained why that was. What I loved about this was the writers' enthusiasm for poetry and emotion. I thought Mr. Michaels did a bang-up job of covering all the different layers of trouble that people have with modern technology, slowly making the world better, but with no emotion. It was so lovely to read this growing old tale through this perspective.

Now, for those sticklers out there, you may not like what that afterword does for the future of writing and may want to burn the book, but just know that would be a crying shame. Read this book and maybe it will change your mind. Hell, I know it changed something in me and that was I should read more god damn poetry, but from humans and more books by Sean Michaels, the author, and not the wrestler.

Please go out there and read this book before it is too late and Skynet does take over, but also so you can see a writer have fun with the age old topic of A.I. taking over, and what so blatantly looks like their love of poetry. If not, read a coming of age story about a human coming of age in their seventies and stay for a very sweet and instant classic tale.

Mr. Michaels, you have instantly made me a fan and I will be going through your back catalogues of books. Please keep writing, but remember to stay out of trouble!

Love always, Chris Humphrey!

A 3.25 star for me. An elderly poet is selected by (The Company) to collaborate with an AI on a poem and is given one week to complete it. We learn about the poet in alternating chapters on her experience working with the AI on the poem, and the retelling of major life events.
I admittedly read more science fiction than poetry, so I went into the book hoping for more of an exploration of outsourcing the arts to automation. The book touches on these themes very briefly, but overall is much more about the poet coming to terms with the events of her life. While I thought the characters were well written and each had their unique quirks, the AI poem part of the plot felt superfluous to the narrative being told and ultimately dragged down the pace. Perhaps I missed an interpretation that I am not familiar enough with this genre to pick up on. While I did enjoy reading it, it just wasn’t a right fit for me.

Stop. Reread that. Think about it. Reflect. Do it again.

Do You Remember Being Born by Sean Michaels
⭐⭐⭐⭐

I was offered an e-ARC of this book by @NetGalley and @penguinrandomca in exchange for an honest review.

"Some things aren't... invented," murmured the voiceover. "They're awakened."

This book was so interesting! It raised so many points in regards to AI technology, collaborative work and the future. It's important to note that some of the poems written in this book were actually written with the help of ChatGPT.

The format of the e-arc made it difficult sometimes to know which character was talking but I'm pretty sure this will be fixed in the hard copy.

Marian is a 75 year old poet asked to participate in the collaborative writing of a long poem with a computer. The computer was trained extensively to understand poems and mostly studied Marian's work so the writing would be more natural and similar. Marian is then confronted with the relevency of authors and artists in a world where AI technology is taking more and more space.

"Humans have a difficult time with "natural". We are better at "interesting" or "beautiful" or "forceful" than we are at "natural." Everything is an exertion, everything is performance."

I wanted this book to dive deeply into the conversation about AI and art - can an AI make art? What is our future now that these two things are intersecting? Do we truly need to worry that AI will "kill" art? I was especially hoping that since the author used AI to write some of the poetry contained within this book. Unfortunately for me, that's not what this book really does - there's a bit of that on the surface level, but this story is much more concerned with Marian herself, her as a representation of real-life poet Marianne Moore, and her less-than-shiny past. I suppose, in some ways, that drives home the fact that a human needs to write the poetry rather than Charlotte, the AI, but I don't feel that this was connected well enough to hit any philosophical points. If you like slow-paced literature, poetry, and Marianne Moore, this will be an interesting read for you. If you're looking for something that truly dives into the conversation about AI and art, this, unfortunately, isn't it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Publishing for the advanced digital copy of this novel.

I gave this a 3.5 stars on Storygraph but I don't have option on here. It was a very slow start for me but once I got into it, I was pretty intrigued to see how the story would unfold. It was a story where I didn't really know exactly where it was going. I liked the storyline in between the main chapters in the "hindsight" chapters to learn more about Marian and her relationship with her family. It was an overall enjoyable read and different from the usual book I read.

A book for people who love poetry, who love words, who love language. Here is an instance where I felt like a male author really nailed writing as a woman. I was constantly reminded of reading Margaret Atwood. At the very least, I thought the main character Marian would be friends with an Atwood character (or with Atwood herself). This is also a book for people who have a certain fascination and/or concern with the rapid development of AI and its potential uses, be they good or evil (or amoral?) The implications were explored a little here, but not a lot - that didn't seem to be what this book concerned itself with. It definitely pondered what constitutes real or good poetry, whether a non-human could ever achieve that without life experience, without discernment, whether poetry without human experience and emotion even has a point. When I got to the end and read the note that the AI-generated text of the novel had been ACTUALLY AI-generated, I didn't know how to feel about it. Did it change my opinion of the book? The author edited that text - used his discernment to select what to include, to refine it - and at the end of the day, it was really effective.

Do You Remember Being Born? – Sean Michaels

Marian Ffarmer, a renowned septuagenarian poet, is invited by a huge tech company to collaborate with an AI software and write a poem. Do You Remember Being Born is about her experience trying to create art with a machine.

Ffarmer (a character based on the American poet, Marianne Moore) chats with Charlotte (the computer) while working on the poem. Through these conversations and her thoughts, the book provokes you to think about concepts like being human, making art and how these are affected when something like AI comes into the picture. Especially with AI being a hot topic right now, the implications are so real, adding to the relevance of this novel.

I loved this book! There were SO MANY lines that just stood out for me, that made me stop and think about what I had just read, how I felt about it. A lot of it revolves around art – how does someone create art, and if a machine can come along and create art just as good (or better) thank you, then, what does that make you? I loved the instances that juxtaposed human existence with AI, showing you why so many are wary of AI and insecure about its rapid growth. There was one bit that compared AI’s limitlessness against the narrowed experiences of a person, but how that limited exposure makes their art unique. Another bit that talked about how machine-written content would influence you felt eerie to me.

Amidst all this, there’s an ongoing thread about Ffarmer’s life, especially involving themes of motherhood, delving into her relationships with her mother and her son. The latter reminded me of The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante. It’s the kind of stark, brutal portrayal of motherhood that you don’t often get to see. I loved it!

Another element I loved was how accurately the experience of being a woman has been described. The awareness of others gazing at/judging you, the emotions the poet feels, her experience as a mother – everything felt so genuine and relatable. I had to remind myself this wasn’t written by a woman.

I don’t claim to have understood all the poetry portions. But I did enjoy reading those. I was a bit confused about some parts towards the end and a couple of details felt like loose ends, left unanswered. Or maybe I just didn’t get them.


But overall, I loved the book. It’s not often that I come across a book that is enjoyable, relevant, thought-provoking, beautifully-written and has characters you want to know more about. Do You Remember Being Born ticks all the boxes. It opens up so many ideas and discussions that I wish I could talk about it all with someone. I can’t wait for more people to read this book!


4.5/5 ⭐

Thank you @netgalley and @penguinrandomca for this eARC.

When famous poet Marian Ffarmer learns that her son Courtney is planning to buy a house, she feels humiliated by her inability to help out. After all, her earnings as a poet haven’t left her with a lot of cash on hand. So when an offer from a prestigious company arrives, asking her to collaborate on a poem with an artificial intelligence, she jumps at the opportunity.

Do You Remember Being Born follows Marian’s introduction to an artificial intelligence named Charlotte, and the struggles Marian encounters as she undertakes the task of working with Charlotte on a poem. Along the way, author Sean Michaels provides flashbacks taking us to different times in Marian’s past, including some that explore her relationship with her mother, and Marian’s struggles to balance her poetic ambitions with child-rearing.

With her tricorne hat and cape, Marian (whose character is based in part on the poet Marianne Moore) makes for an interesting figure. Her life and relationships have their quirks, to say the least. Despite Marian’s poetic prowess, she doesn’t find the task of collaborating with Charlotte easy. Marian is not, by her own admission, a tech-savvy individual. She didn’t get her first computer until she was in her fifties. In addition, the task she’s been assigned isn’t open-ended—there’s a time limit of one week, and some details that weren’t clear at the outset add pressure.

The tension caused by the time-limited challenge kept me turning the pages. Marian’s inner turmoil as she desperately wonders whether she’ll be able to complete the assignment in time, and whether The Poem will be any good even if they do manage to pull it off, made her an empathetic character. Backstory chapters written in second person drew me in more actively than another choice of voice might have done. I enjoyed the descriptions of Marian’s time spent in the Mind Studio, working with Charlotte. The book contained some humorous dialogue and situations, and some tender scenes as well.

That being said, readers should be aware of what this book is about, and what it’s not about. A description of the book on the publisher’s web site describes it as an “an aching examination of art-making, family, identity and belonging.” I’d say it delivered on that score. Marian comes to realize some things about herself, and her place in the world, and there are interesting family dynamics that perhaps contribute to Marian’s determination to earn the promised payment, so she can help Courtney with his house-buying aspirations.

On the other hand, I’ve formed my own opinions about the issues around AIs capable of writing, and Do You Remember Being Born wasn’t quite the story I was expecting. That is to say, the protagonist didn’t seem to struggle with the ethical aspect of the whole notion as much as I might have liked. That being said, every author had a right to tell the story they want to tell, and Michaels delivers a smoothly written, insightful, humorous, and moving narrative.

In the book, material ostensibly written by the artificial intelligence is indicated in grey shading. As stated in the Author’s Note, these segments were developed with the assistance of language models, including OpenAI’s GPT-3 as well as custom poetry-generation software Moorebot, Though Michaels edited the machine-generated text, the method of derivation suggests that Do You Remember Being Born yields a reasonable sample of how language models might respond in a situation of this nature.

Are artificial intelligences going to replace writers anytime soon? Do You Remember Being Born gives readers a sneak preview of the future, so they can draw their own conclusions.

Note: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book provided by the publisher, Penguin Random House Canada, via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Do you remember being born is a wonderful story about an elderly poet, Marian, being asked to co-write a historic poem with an AI, Charlotte. It's a poetic (who would have thought!) piece on loneliness and regret.

I loved the characters and their interactions. Marian's thoughts felt real, if at times a bit too arrogant. Her relationships with family, Charlotte, other poets, and the likes felt intensely vivid - I could imagine a little old lady in a fancy hat making funny comments and "swooping" to music. Charlotte stole the show though. Her poetry and questions had me in tears at points. The idea of AIs experiencing loneliness is something I'm sure we all think about since we tend to anthropomorphize robots and AIs, so I found Charlotte's journey working with Marian to be especially moving.

The format of this book was excellent, the dialogue between Marian and Charlotte was heart-wrenching at times. The use of second person was delightful, it felt as though the conversations between Marian and Charlotte were continued with its use, as if Charlotte was narrating Marian's life, feelings, joys, and failures from the moment of her birth, which Marian, as a human, is incapable of remembering completely, unlike Charlotte.

My one complaint about the book was when Marian would go introspective and have these thoughts about her reactions to others/events being gendered, like "am I only reacting this way because I am a woman" type thoughts. They were heavy handed and jolted me out of the story sometimes because they didn't feel natural to her thought process. Although perhaps it was a bias on my part learning the author is a younger man writing the POV of an elderly woman.

Overall I quite enjoyed the novel, the pacing was a bit slow but I think that lent to the drawn out feeling of the week going by and life being reminisced upon. Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.