“If ‘The Best American Poetry’ captures ‘the zeitgeist of the current attitudes in American poetry,’ we should be asking: Why are those attitudes so f****d up?”
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A.O. Scott’s Poetry Lessons
“A conversation with the NYT critic on his popular close reads of poems.”
Found Poetry, Marital Musings, and our Top 5
“I peeled the list off the windshield and held it like an artifact: evidence of a life I didn’t know but suddenly cared about. It read like a poem. A confession. What was the story behind this list, I wondered—and what would come for this stranger after the checkout aisle?” I love making lists. They […]
Eight Limes, No More: The Accidental Poetry of Found Lists
A found list is a rare analog window into someone else’s needs—an accidental autobiography, a blank space to be filled with one’s imagination.
The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA
“By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s ‘ChatGPT for genomes’ could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design.”
In Defense of Despair
“The feeling is most commonly framed as an end point, a level of despondency that cannot be overcome. But it doesn’t have to be.”
Is Mary Oliver Embarrassing?
“Shame seemed like an obstacle to appreciating the poet. Instead, it became the key to understanding her work.”
The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”
Building an AI Data Center in Pine Island, Minnesota
“I learned about the data center as soon as the scrappy sign was erected. I was thrilled to see something new; my drive hasn’t changed much in three years. I was less thrilled for Pine Island, which has, like many rural Midwestern towns, become an unlikely microcosm of the AI debate.”

