America 2020, In Vision and Verse

"It’s been a year unlike any other in living memory. We selected five poems by contemporary American poets and asked five photographers to let the poems inspire them...." Read more in The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/20/us/american-poetry-photos.html.

These Young Black Poets Have a Message

Check out "Listen Up: These Young Black Poets Have a Message" (ten teenage writers show the future of poetry), an interactive feature in The New York Times.

Introduction by Maya Phillips, interviews by Pierre-Antoine Louis. Poets featured: William Lohier, Nyarae Francis, Inari Williams, Alora Young, Madison Petaway, Jacoby Collins, Ava Emhoff, Leila Mottley, Akilah Toney, and Samuel Getachew.

A poem by Philip Metres in The New York Times

Congratulations to Northeast Ohio's own Philip Metres, whose poem "Ode to the Oranges of Jaffa" was selected by Naomi Shihab Nye to be featured in this week's New York Times Magazine. 

Read it at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/magazine/poem-ode-to-the-oranges-of-jaffa.html.

If you like that,  I recommend you check out his most recent book (in which the poem also appears): Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon Press, 2020).

The New York Times makes a poem

from Mary Grimm:

• www.nytimes.com

Haiku-bot writes "haiku" at NYT

Ok, everybody, repeat after me: just because it's written in seventeen syllables 5-7-5 doesn't make it a haiku.
But, the New York Times "senior software architect" Jacob Harris just wrote a software bot that trolls through the NYT, and extracts 5-7-5 syllable fragments-- "The New York Times has built a haiku bot," as Justin Ellis phrases it.

• Check it out: haiku.nytimes.com
• James Harris discusses the program

OK, you know my fascination with auto-poetry.  Few of these really rate as actual haiku. Still, here's one:

The buzzing of a
thousand bees in the tiny
curled pearl of an ear.

--well, that one's unfair.  It's from the book review of Kate Atkinson's novel Life After Life, and the part that the haiku-bot found and chose to extract for the haiku is a section that is quoting a passage from the novel.  So, as a novelist, Atkinson has quite a poetic ear.  Bravo, but no kudos for Mr. haiku-bot.

So, no, not really haiku.  Even the author, Harris, admits as much:
"...That's a lot harder to teach an algorithm, though, so we just count syllables like most amateur haiku aficionados do."

A few might be called relatively pretty decent senryu, though:

People often do
 what they have to do to make
 their story sound right.

or,  more sinister:

 It's hard to find your 

bearings in the middle of

 a cataclysm.

or even insightful:

Slowly, he began

 to believe those things that he

 used to say in jest.

I guess the haiku-bot a bit better at writing senryu than haiku.

But, looks like robots are starting to take over the business of writing poetry for us, and pretty soon we'll be out of a job.  I guess all that's left for us humans is to watch youtoobs and check out teh lolcats.  So, with that thought: have a happy National Poetry month, everybody!

• discussion at mashable

Poetry for the end of Daylight Saving Time

From the New York Times, a selection of six poems to celebrate the end of Daylight Savings Time, from our poet laureate W.S. Merwin, as well as Vijay Seshadri, Louise Glück, Derek Walcott, James Tate, and Mary Oliver.

Today you get an extra hour, to use as you wish, wisely or foolishly. Make your choice!

photo by GL, 2010

New York Times finds Poetry in Craig'sList

In Friday's New York Times, poet Alan Feuer finds poetry in the "Missed Connections" section of the New York Craig's List: Poetic Connections: Heartbreak. He admits to adding line- and stanza-breaks, but says that the words themselves are verbatim.

Just one example from the many found poems:

the flowers i sent to you anonymously

are wilted by now,
as is my heart.
utterly
and completely