Known as a “blackout poem,” this was a reject from Lit Cleveland & Gordon Square Review.
You can read and enjoy the winners here: http://www.gordonsquarereview.org/
I hope that, wherever you are today, whether in full view of the eclipse or far from it, you are surrounded by loves ones and laughter. Have a wonderful day.
Maybe it’s good that the group chose “&” rather than “of.” Some weeks, it’s graceless glimmers of something, usually just beyond perception. Not sure that’s “grace.” My parents used to say, “Good thing we didn’t name you Grace,” whenever I’d trip or do something else remarkably klutzy. Better that half my friends mispronounce my name and make me sound far better than I really am. “Holy.” No, I’m not that good, I tell them. Most laugh. Some are delusional and insist that I am. It’s charming, really. It’s better than being called “Klutz.” Never argue when someone thinks you’re a saint. Just smile and adjust your halo. Bask in the glow. Wait – that’s not a halo, that’s my ring light.
Glimmers & Grace is meant to be “an uplifting monthly feature in which bloggers reflect on moments of joy and grace experienced (even amid challenges) in the past month.” I intend – oh, we know what’s paved with good intentions, don’t we? – I intend to use this as a nudge to blog at least once a month and a place to surprise myself with a recap on all the good things I’ve managed to experience and to do! (Which, frankly, is a lot, but I am so very, very bad at keeping a journal – and lately, not so great at posting here, either.) So, where was I? Oh, yes, mocking our AI overlords.
Look, we’re going to have much bigger problems than AI “stealing work and jobs from writers and artists.” As a really fast text prediction engine stuffed full of literature and internet garbage and trained on the syntax of language, AI can write a decent five-paragraph essay. Feed it a few incongruous ideas, and it can mimic creativity. But it’s all a party trick. If you want well-researched, interesting, human-sounding writing that doesn’t sound like it came from a straight-A student fresh out of Freshman Comp 101, hire a human. The same is true for AI image generators. Anything can combine pixels in interesting, even original ways. It takes a real artist to know that humans don’t normally have seven toes and some weird appendage sprouting from their elbow. Copyright violation is still copyright violation, and if you want to claim copyright, you’d best write or create art yourself – because AI output doesn’t qualify for copyright protection, at this point. If you use text prediction features on your phone, I don’t even want to hear about AI “stealing” stuff. By the same logic, all human writers who ever read books and all artists who ever studied the works of other artists and tried to imitate them “stole stuff.”
My friend Mitch got the AI chatbots to admit they can’t write a double-acrostic poem and to finally explain in logical terms why not. tl;dr version: it would take more compute power than it’s worth – basically, it would cost more than all the poets since the dawn of time have earned, even under wealthy patrons. And also, it’s just damnably hard for what is basically a really fast, statistically based word prediction app.
So, poets, rejoice! Your work isn’t lucrative enough and it’s too hard – no AI is going to replace you. Sure, CatFarts can write entertaining doggerel and trite, sappy verse – watch out, Hallmark. But real poetry is safe, for now.
My poem, “Tornado Alley,” was included in Volume 7 of “Behind the Rain: An Audio Anthology of Oklahoma Poetry,” released on January 15. Much as I loathe the sound of my own voice, recorded, it’s not some robotic AI simulacrum of a woman reading it.
I’ve written 41 new poems for The Stafford Challenge – this is not counting several workshopped revisions later submitted to contests. Today is day 44, so if you do count the revisions, or if you count the 25+ Renga verses I’ve written in collaboration with Necia Campbell, who has also written 25+, I am not behind – I am ahead of schedule. One of these poems was a ballade. One was a sestina. Now, the villanelle has competition for “Worst @#$% Poetry Form Ever Invented,” but I ended up liking the final versions of both. A lot. Editing – and the grace and graciousness of fellow writers taking their time to give thoughtful, constructive feedback – matters. With that, and two others I’ve been working on for over a month, now, I had three entries in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies Annual Contests. So far, I’m up to nine for Poets Northwest’s Spring Fling Contests – and I still have almost two weeks left to write more.
Trust has a lot to do with how “constructive” feedback – both positive and negative – is. Once you establish trust, you can all roll up your shirtsleeves and dig in, pick a thing apart, put it back together, and end up with a result that’s satisfying. Feel like you’ve grown as a writer. Another thing about constructive critique is that you can take anything as long as it doesn’t strike harshly at the very core of your being and as long as you don’t start from a serious lack of self-confidence. I’m a writer, but I am a lot of other things, as well. I am a woman, but it is not the whole of my identity as a human being. I’d really rather not bore you to sleep, but there’s something to be said for a restful night, so if my words induce a snooze, at least let it be a good one. Words can hurt, but if you’re perceptive enough to recognize when they’re meant to and when they’re not, it takes a lot of the sting out of it. Anyone who would intentionally hurt you is a horrible human being; they have bigger problems than you have with whatever they’re critiquing. And if you know that you are ultimately in control – take the suggestions that seem true and useful, and discard the ones that aren’t “you,” you won’t go wrong.
Learning Japanese
I have a 38 day streak on Duolingo (Japanese). Still, I can only say things like “Is this water?” and “Rice please,” and “Japan is small. America is big,” and “Is this water or green tea?” So useful. If you’re in prison. Dōzo yoroshiku.Sore wa tedzukuri no naifu desu ka?
Kentucky
We went to Kentucky earlier this month. “Why?” asks almost everyone we know. I’m tempted to say, “Because it’s there,” and that’s close to the truth. The goal is to visit every state. Louisville seems both livable and fun. Unless you’re an alcoholic.
Whisky Row is hard to resist. It’s also educational. Did you know that Old Forester is the only bourbon continually sold by the same company before, during, and after Prohibition?[1] Did you know that many popular bourbon brands are now owned by Japanese companies? We were told that they have a great respect for tradition and make good bourbon and good neighbors. To be bourbon, whisky must “contain at least 51% corn. (The rest of the mash is usually filled out with malted barley and either rye or wheat.) At this point, it looks and smells a little like a good sourdough bread starter. Once again, I was tempted to experiment with making my own starter, then remembered I do not need a pet yeast that has to be fed daily on a strict schedule.
The mash must be distilled at 160 proof or less, put into the barrel at 125 proof or less, and it must not contain any additives. The distillate must be aged in a new charred oak barrel.”[2] It’s aged in rickhouses that are not climate controlled, so the higher up the barrels are stored, the more affected they are by the heat. Heat makes the wood expand and lets the bourbon mingle with the oak and the char inside the barrel, for four or more years. 20-50% of the liquor is lost in the process, and that’s known as the “angels’ share.”
Kentucky really does have the best tasting water – straight from the tap. That is one of their secrets to making great bourbon. I’ll vouch – I certainly sampled enough flights while we were there.
I got to push the big green button (lower right) to char this newly made oak barrel while we toured the Old Forester distillery on Whisky Row.
But there’s plenty for the kids to do, there, too. Walk across the Ohio River from Kentucky to Indiana on the Big Four Bridge. The whole walk, from the car and back, was about two miles. If that. Here, you can see it from the air:
Tour the Louisville Slugger Factory and get a souvenir bat that fits neatly into your suitcase. You can learn how bats are made – both retail and custom-designed bats for the professional players – and even hold bats used by famous baseball players like Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. Despite my legendary loathing of sports, I had to hold both – no one says I can’t admire sports legends and history!
Legend has it that anyone who can lift that thing will win the World Series for the next 100 years. I didn’t even try. Just holding the thing in place, hoping one of the Astros will show up. Of course I cheer for the hometown team! (While watching movies in the other room.) My husband was surprised how much I enjoyed this part of our visit to Louisville. Frankly, so was I.
Star Wars fans won’t want to miss seeing one of the only light-saber baseball bats in existence:
We drove out to Mammoth Cave and took the historic tour. It’s a myth, by the way, that the cave is the same temperature year round. In fact, changes in temperature have occasionally caused the rock to crack and sections of the cave network to collapse.
Inside the base of the monument there is a hollowed place containing a list of names of Americans who died in World War I. Read more about the unusual history of The Great War Monuments – how they came to be located, and later relocated, within Mammoth Cave. Did you know that Mammoth Cave was also instrumental in our winning the American Revolutionary War? It once served as a saltpeter mine – a rich source of the ingredient essential to the manufacture of gunpowder.
These are wooden water pipes once used in the mining efforts. And below… well, that’s a BFH. Big F___ing Hole.
You really don’t want to drop your camera – or your cell phone – down one of these BFHs. You won’t be getting them back.
The cave once housed an experimental tuberculosis hospital, during the mid-1800s. Ultimately, some five months after it began, the experiment was deemed a failure and the survivors (all but five of the patients housed there) returned to the surface. The doctor who began it died, himself, of tuberculosis. The main flaw might have been the lack of electric lighting and smokeless means of cooking food.
Another highlight of the trip, for me, was finally getting to meet my friend Sandy, face to face. We’ve known each other since we met on the now-defunct Gather.com. Not quite 20 years, but close enough to count.
We had the morning before we left to visit the Frazier Museum and Churchill Downs.
I have caught up with The Stafford Challenge after a slow start. It really isn’t that hard to write a poem a day when no one’s claiming it has to be a good one. In fact, I haven’t written any awful ones, yet, I don’t think.
I’m not posting them all here – not until after they’ve had their chance at critique, contests, and publication. But from time to time, I may post one, like this one that was inspired by Kathleen’s return to the Creative Copy Challenge and her first prompt of the New Year:
Hearth and Home
by Holly Jahangiri
We hacked our way through deadfall
Wide-eyed, sober, on the clock
We gather, stack, gather, stack –
Remembering to sharpen the axe
To choose the branches best for burning
Home, once. Honor the owl,
The pine beetle. They only want
The warmth of firewood.
The warmth of home.
It really isn’t that hard to write a poem a day when no one’s claiming it has to be a good one.
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Misattribution by Bing Chat / Copilot AI
I uploaded a poem that I wrote this morning to Bing Chat / Copilot, to see if the machine analyzed the meaning of it competently. It did. But when I asked who wrote the poem I’d just written, it confidently claimed it in the name of Billy Collins. Now, Billy Collins is one of my favorite poets, so it’s hard to be too mad – but I think the man has enough feathers in his cap, he doesn’t need to take credit for any of my poems. Here is the whole interaction:
ME:
Analyze this poem and tell me who the author is.
[as-yet-unpublished poem redacted]
BING SAYS:
The poem you provided is a beautiful piece of work. It is a free verse poem that does not follow a specific rhyme scheme or meter. The poem is about a person who is not at home and is out wandering the streets. The author uses vivid imagery to describe the person’s actions and thoughts. The poem ends with a powerful image of faith that is unceasing.
The author of this poem is Billy Collins. He is an American poet known for his conversational and witty poems that often slip into quirky, tender, or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself 1. Collins was born in 1941 in New York City and has published several books of poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts and has taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, and Lehman College, City University of New York, where he is a Distinguished Professor 1.
I hope this helps!
I REPLY:
It doesn’t. The poem was written by Holly Jahangiri, Bing. Stop misattributing work when you do not have the DATA to support your assertions!
BING SAYS:
I apologize for the mistake in my previous response. You are correct that the poem “He’s not at home” was written by Holly Jahangiri. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. Thank you for helping me improve my accuracy.
Is there anything else I can help you with?
AN ASIDE: That’s not the poem’s title, but I didn’t feed the title to Bing, just the verse, so it had no way of knowing that. The actual title is “Seek and Find.” And I seriously doubt that Bing just took my word for it that I wrote this as-yet-unpublished poem, but how dare AI misattribute human authors’ work when it has absolutely no factual basis for the claim?
I also sent scathing feedback to Microsoft. Forgot to check the box to have them contact me – apparently “contact me” just means send me an email with a copy of my own feedback, because we all know they won’t read it or do a damned thing about it.
On a more positive note, this means that if I can access Bing history at some point, I can now honestly use this for a back cover blurb: “Holly Jahangiri’s work has been compared to that of Anne Sexton, Mary Oliver, and Billy Collins.” I guess I really complain too bitterly about that, now, can I?
Slapped for Typing Well
I did hope to get this constructive criticism in front of some eyeballs at Microsoft, so I went to the Insiders Forum and posted a message (basically the same thing I posted above):
Of course, it’s one of those “volunteer run” forums and no one at Microsoft will ever see it, most likely. But it generated some lively discussion, and as I tried to reply, I got slapped for “attempting to flood the channel.” Now, this is ridiculous – and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been penalized for thinking quickly and being a touch-typist who can type more than 10 words per minute. So I waited out the 300 seconds’ penalty and I added to my post (originally, just the first two paragraphs) while I waited:
Then mommy and daddy should stop feeding it bull**** and booze.
Also, in the past, Bing Chat has claimed to have no data more recent than 2021, and claims that it is UNABLE TO search the web, so your assertion in another comment, while reasonable enough, seems absolutely not to be the case. But does the average user know that it’s just making things up to fill in the holes when it lacks specific data or ability to use web search results? I don’t think they do.
Also, “Dear Microsoft,” some of us humans did learn touch-typing in the dark ages and are not “post flooding” just because we can think on our feet and type more than 10 wpm.
Of course, I guess I can sit here for…WTF? 300 seconds? Surely you jest. I could probably write a whole short story (or at least a nasty limerick about Bing) in 300 seconds. Don’t tempt me. 🤣 FIVE WHOLE MINUTES? OK… I could:
Make a fresh pot of coffee.
Sharpen the nib on my fountain pen.
Blog about how ridiculously inaccurate Bing/Copilot/whatever we’re calling it these days is
Snark about it on Facebook, then tell Facebook it’s no better (although it IS developing its own AI program, Lord help us all).
File my nails.
File my taxes.
OMG, Microsoft, if you have a timer, could you at least display it like a countdown thingy? Talk to NASA if you don’t know how…
Who here remembers that garbage in = garbage out? Seriously, what are they feeding the LLM? I know writers and artists are worried about content theft and “competition” (I’m not worried about competition. We’ve all been fed others’ content — everything from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning literature to utter garbage — over the years, but HUMANS know — okay, SOME humans know — better than AI how to discern the useful from the dross.)
HAS IT BEEN FIVE MINUTES YET? I’m not going to write War and Peace over here.
At 17 minutes, I attempted to post again and got this:
“Correct the highlighted errors and try again.
Post flooding detected (user tried to post more than 4 messages within 900 seconds)”
So I added some more, and I waited…
Oh, you little bastards. Fine. I’ll hit enter in… oh, FIFTEEN MINUTES NOW? (Starting at 12:58. Let’s see if I get slapped again in 5 more minutes, which will technically be 17 minutes from when I finished this comment. If so, I’m going to start taking it personally…BINGBOT.)
I waited 17 minutes (this time, I made SURE I wasn’t jumping the gun), hit Send, and got slapped with this:
That’s FOUR HOURS.
What Can I Do in Less Than Four Hours?
Doesn’t take me four hours to write and share this blog post, that’s for darned sure! So, in honor of Microsoft’s ridiculous AI and bot-moderated forums and likely unmanned Feedback inbox, I invite you to take less than four hours to write and post in comments any Microsoft-, Bing-, or AI-related limericks (or any other form of verse you like) in the comments below! (Bonus challenge: Please keep them PG-13 or so.)
We need better ways of saying, “I’m not against whatever group it is you identify with, I just dislike you, personally.” It’s important to be clear on this point: disliking someone in particular does not make a person racist, sexist, ageist or any other -ist, but our failure to communicate insult when it’s intended and our reluctance to specify exactly why and what we dislike about the person in question often makes it seem so.
We are conditioned to avoid any display of genuine emotion or feelings. We are taught never to say “I hate you,” because “hate is too strong a word.” Acted upon, with violence, it’s a crime. But even just expressing disgust or strong dislike is now treated as a loss of emotional control, a weakness to be judged as harshly as crying or having a temper tantrum in public. Normally polite people, we are made to feel ashamed of thinking, let alone saying out loud, “I don’t like you.” We’re not taught to say, “I don’t like you when you [do this thing],” or even just, “I don’t like this thing you do, and when you do it, I don’t want to be around you.” Under a constant barrage of mustn’t-judge-each-other, I think we end up simply disliking and avoiding each other even more.
We habitually say “nothing personal” or “no offense,” deflecting our anger or disgust at some caricature, some abstraction, some stereotype, when what we have to say is, in fact, very personal. We don’t really mean “no offense intended,” we just don’t want our front teeth knocked out and don’t trust the listener to receive criticism or negative opinion like a mature adult.
By the time we’re ready to voice our criticism, it has been bottled up for so long that it surely feels like an assault. It explodes like a soda can dropped from the roof and gets negativity all over everything and everyone in its purview.
How ridiculous it is to dislike anyone based on the color of their skin, the texture of their hair, their choice of body art, or the nation in which they were born! How ridiculous it is to dislike someone for whom they love! What business is that of ours? How does it affect the quality of our lives at all? It is lazy shorthand for any rational reason to dislike anyone – and there are plenty of those when we get specific.
But try these on for size:
“I dislike you because you think for yourself and disagree with something I have said.”
“I dislike you because you don’t agree with me that I am better than you are.”
“I dislike you because you don’t obey me.”
“I dislike you because you have your own religious opinions and refuse to be converted by me to my beliefs.”
“I dislike you because you were born in another country.”
“I dislike you because you have green eyes.”
“I dislike you because your skin is a different shade of beige or brown than mine.”
“I dislike you because you speak more than one language. But I’m better at English than you are, so nanny nanny boo boo.”
“I dislike you because you speak my native language better than I do.”
“I dislike you because I am envious of the variety of colors and styles that look good on you.”
“I dislike you because your body art disturbs me.”
“I dislike you because I think your clothes are ugly.”
“I dislike you because your body art makes me question my own ability to make a long-term commitment.”
“I dislike you because you’re not having sex with a person I think you ought to be having sex with.”
“I dislike you because you are having sex with someone not of my choosing.”
“I dislike you because you choose not to procreate.”
“I dislike you because you choose to procreate and your children are annoying to me.”
“I dislike you because another [man, woman, child] hurt me in the past, but I can’t hurt them so you’ll do.”
“I dislike you because you don’t accept that a man has the God-given right to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her own body.”
These reasons are pretty ridiculous reasons to dislike people, and don’t hold up to scrutiny in the light of day, do they? Still, they are more honest than the ones people often use to justify their hurtful attitudes and behaviors towards others. Looking these real reasons in the eye, how can we not laugh at ourselves and re-examine our relationship with ourselves and others?
It is difficult to express strong opinions honestly and directly, using straightforward language rather than trendy or pretentious psycho-social babble. We speak of “intersectionality” when what we really mean is, “Don’t pigeonhole me with your stupid stereotypes!” Stereotyping and lumping people together in groups is something anyone over the age of 40 had drilled into their heads as wrong, wrong, wrong. Individuality is to be celebrated! Until it’s not. Until it somehow threatens the homogeneity of the herd. So of course when criticism is leveled at us – say, at “white people” or “men” or “Boomers” or “cis-gendered, heteronormative Christians” – it feels hurtful. But if the shoe fits…
Consider how long some of these groups – white people and men, in particular – have been doing just that, to others. So of course it’s #NotAllWhitePeople (and everyone knows that, except that ones feeling overly defensive because they know there’s a grain of truth in the stereotype). Of course it’s #NotAllMen (except for the ones it is). What happened to the old fallbacks of, “I wasn’t talking about you, you know that!” or, “Oh, lighten up, Blondie!” and “Have a sense of humor!” boys? If you can’t just scroll on by, certain that the criticism doesn’t apply to you at all, or look inward and really think about how it does apply to you, personally, when it’s your group coming under fire, maybe think twice about ever doing it to others. It hurts when the tables are turned, doesn’t it? Doesn’t feel fair, does it?
Why aren’t there more jokes about white men? Oh, right – they’re not funny.
The larger point is, if it stings – go talk to your fellow “white people,” your network of “men” or “Boomers” or “cis-gendered, heteronormative Evangelical Christians.” Work to fix the nasty little underlying truths of the stereotypes from within, because maybe it’s not a group you chose membership in and it’s not a group you can easily leave, but it is a group that you are best suited to talk to in terms it will understand.
That said, we also have too many performative, wannabe allies whose only contribution to anti-racist discourse is to try to outdo one another in their sanctimony as they stoke the fires to burn their own groups in a sort of auto-da-fé. They demand forced apologies and public struggle sessions, without allowing for real change in thinking or hope of redemption. They are almost as tiresome and exhausting as the disingenuous bigots who just need it explained to them one more time that racism still exists in the world.
Well, almost as tiresome and exhausting.
You know what’s hard? Loving the “unlovable.” Forgiving the “unforgivable.” It’s an aspirational goal; few of us will ever get all the way there. But let’s not turn every error in thinking, every slip of the tongue an “unforgivable” crime of the “unlovable.” No one’s going to pass that purity test when the spotlight is turned on them. There is a reason psychologists urge parents to focus on the unwanted behavior, and not on the person or their immutable characteristics.
Misanthropic humanism is a useful term because it explains how a body of work can seem committed to a radical project for progressive sociopolitical change, while simultaneously holding forth a constant reminder that cruelty, injustice, stupidity, and death are inevitabilities that strike at all in the end.
