The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“… this poem burst forth

from my brain like a boot

or a god: furious”

— Gail Wronsky / “The Moon is in Labor”

“… ambiguity creates different contours, curves that are spacious and deep because they open into deeper meaning rather than weaving connections and explanations.”

— Grant Faulkner / “Grant Faulkner on capturing the essence of a story”

“Delirium. I’m out the door. Stasis is a sieve through which I drag myself.

Literature feels / far away.”

— Jane Huffman / “On Moving”

“It is not hard to imagine an A.I. model that has absorbed tremendous amounts of ideological falsehoods injecting them into the Zeitgeist with impunity.”

— Sue Halpern / “What We Still Don’t Know About How A.I. is Trained” / New Yorker

“… the people inventing them think they are potentially incredibly dangerous: ten percent of them, in fact, think they might extinguish the human species. They don’t know exactly how, but think Sorcerer’s Apprentice (or google ‘paper clip maximizer.’)”

— Bill McKibben / “Regular Old Intelligence is Sufficient—Even Lovely”

“I think poetry clears a space to linger—to swim in the experience or obsession—without necessarily expecting some kind of rational or valuative payoff. That’s part of what feels so exciting to me about poetry: it can be a place for mere noticing.”

— Maggie Millner / The Creative Independent interview

“…the moon is,
hung aloft in effulgent skies:
eating nails for breakfast,
dying in childbirth…”

— Virginia Konchan / “Ubi Sunt”

What I’m Listening To:

“And if you think peace is a common goal

That goes to show how little you know”

— The Smiths / “Death of a Disco Dancer”