Hey, gang — you can order Local Gems Press’ newest poetry anthology from Amazon; see the link below. Its title is Empire Poetry Verse: A New York State Poetry Anthology, and it features poems from nearly 200 poets who have ties to New York. (I am one of them; if you happen to order the book, please check out my love poem, “Like White Plumeria Petal.”)
I know little about AI, compared with the average person these days. (And I suppose that’s strange; I’ve been a serious fan of science fiction since age 19 or so. I still remember devouring books by Arthur C. Clarke, Orson Scott Card and Harry Harrison on summer vacations.)
I do know that AI suddenly seems everywhere — on Grammarly, on Google, on my phone … and it’s the subject of too many damn YouTube advertisements. (AI’ve had enough.)
The little with which I’m acquainted leaves me unimpressed. Google’s AI results (which it supplies to me unprompted) are too vague and sometimes misleading.
The novelty of Amazon’s “Echo” and my phone’s virtual assistant likewise faded for me quickly. I like to read and absorb information; I retain far less when I hear it. And these, too, are still clumsy technologies. (I consulted my phone a moment ago about shoegaze bands, only to have it respond with information about “suitcase bands” and a series of luggage advertisements.)
There is another reason, however, that I remain late to AI party, and it is as subtle and as troubling as it is predictable — I believe that I am subconsciously avoiding AI because of my apprehensions.
I’ve heard the same admonitions that we all have about how AI cannibalizes the existing work of artists and writers to only ostensibly “create” something new. Those warnings have left me with a gnawing existential dread.
The news and my social media have had a lot to say about exploitative AI “art.” The things I’ve read about “book-writing bots” and AI-generated poetry are equally daunting. I’ve perused a couple of AI poems and, while they’re rudimentary, I honestly think I would mistake them for being authentic if they were submitted to me as an editor.
At first, none of the issues connected with AI affected me directly. The first problem I’d heard about was students using AI to generate essays and papers. Then came the “image generators” that look like so much fun, and their “creations” popping up on Facebook. The latest controversy I learned about was brought to my attention today — leading comic book artists being accused by fans of “soulless plagiarism” for using AI in their illustrations.
Because I am human and therefore prone to emotional biases, I am always the most concerned when the creative people I trust sound genuinely alarmed. Their worries primarily stem from the idea that anyone’s writing and artwork are now vulnerable to a kind of computerized theft.
What’s far more harrowing for me is the specter of obsolescence. As a poet or storyteller, am I easily replaceable by a computer program? If I am not presently so, will tomorrow’s astonishing advancements change that?
Am I feeling the same anxiety as people in my parents’ generation, when robots first arrived in factories during the prior century? Creative people are not magical beings. Why should we think of ourselves that way? We’ve simply sought to develop certain skill sets — why should our niche be unique among human endeavors?
Or is the overall situation even worse for all of us — does even the notion of “creative” machines ultimately steal something from our shared definition of being human?
Hey … I’ll reiterate my opening statement here — I know little about AI, compared with others in my peer group. My apprehension should not be mistaken for an informed position.
But … yikes. What a discomfiting topic to ponder.
Image credit: Copyrighted by Loew’s International. Artists(s) not known., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The new Gathering 2024 poetry anthology, which contains my poem “prayer upon an empty hilltop,” is now available over at Amazon.
This is Gathering’s second annual publication, and it is once again a joint initiative between Poets Anonymous and Local Gems Press. I remain quite grateful for this opportunity to Bards President James P. Wagner, as well as Lesley Tyson and Megan McDonald of Poets Anonymous. 🙂
Peeking Cat Literary announced today that its latest anthology, Peeking Cat 40, is available for purchase over at Lulu.com. A paperback copy costs just $12.35 U.S.D. plus shipping. The publisher says that the book will also be available at Amazon in a couple of weeks.
I just ordered my copy. Peeking Cat has always been one of my favorite indie lit publishers, and this issue includes 109 pages featuring 64 writers from around the world. (Yes, one of those is me — my poem “The Rough, Violet Stone,” which Peeking Cat published in January, is included.)
Thanks, Amazon, but I honestly didn’t mean to order my belt from goddamned Munchkinland.
Who was this designed for? A ventriloquist dummy?
Did they pass along my order to the Build-A-Bear Workshop?
I’m so pleased to note here that Down in the Dirt has once again included a poem of mine in a poetry collection. This time out, the magazine published “An Ode to the Paintings of a Newly Discovered Artist” in an anthology it released today, Late Frost. ) The magazine first published this piece in its regular issue last month.
If you’d like to order a copy of the anthology, you can order it from Amazon at this link.
Thanks, as always, to Editor Janet Kuypers for allowing me to share my voice via Down in the Dirt!
I got some more good news today, gang — Down in the Dirt magazine will feature another poem of mine in its November 2020 issue. This time out, it will be my newer (and entirely apolitical!) piece, “An Ode to the Paintings of a Newly Discovered Artist.”
The poem will be published online soon over at Scars Publications; the magazine itself will be available for purchase via Amazon this Fall. I’ll post a link when it becomes available.
As always, I am grateful to Editor Janet Kuypers for selecting my work!
Amazon has the pin at left advertised as a “Harry Potter” character, but I immediately saw R. J. MacReady from John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982).
Omni in the 1980’s was an absolutely unique magazine dedicated to science fiction and science fact — it was always weird and occasionally wonderful. Its content was consistently a good deal trippier than anything you’d find in more mainstream contemporaries like Scientific American or Discover — futurism, the paranormal, and short stories that were pretty damned abstract. (I remember Patricia Highsmith’s “The Legless A” being a real head-scratcher for me.) And the covers to Omni were frequently awesome.
I had a subscription around 1989 or so — I believe I got a year’s subscription as either a Christmas or birthday present. I still remember it arriving in the mailbox. I think I had all of the issues you see below — except the third one. That issue is from January 1983, and I never had it. I’m including it here because it’s too interesting not to share.
Stephen King fans will recognize Don Brauitgam’s artwork for the cover of King’s classic 1978 short story collection, “Night Shift.” Brautigam apparently sold it to the magazine later. (Interesting, too, is the similarity of the artist’s name to a key character in King’s subsequent “Hearts in Atlantis” and his “The Dark Tower” series — the kindly psychic, Ted Brautigan.)
Anyway, if you were geeky enough to enjoy this back in the day, the entire run of Omni is currently available at Amazon for $3 a pop. It was available online for free for a while, and I think you can still find all of the short stories uploaded in pdf if you google them — I found a bunch, including Highsmith’s story. (I wonder if I’d get a better sense of it if I read it today.)
I’m happy today to be able to share The Bees Are Dead’s release of my audio recording of “Operation Staffhound,” by Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron. This truly excellent poem is an excerpt from his 2014 dystopian novel in verse format, “The Pustoy.” (I quite positively reviewed the book both here at the blog and over at Amazon, where it can be purchased — “Operation Staffhound” might be my favorite poem in the complete work.)
“The Pustoy” is a particularly dark science fiction epic that imagines a genocidal dictator, Lev Solokov, ruling a nightmarish future Britain. The brutal “Staffhounds” are his fascist foot-soldiers in the streets.
I had great fun reading the poem. I’m grateful to Philippe for allowing me to interpret it, and to The Bees Are Dead for sharing my recording with its audience:
Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron’s “Operation Staffhound” at The Bees Are Dead
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 