The Daily: 12 June 2024

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I love shuffling the furniture! Here is completely free way to create a wholly fresh space — and get some good exercise in the process. It’s a running joke in my family. Where is the sofa this month… And why is the dining room now in the parlor?

Because I thought it flowed better. Also it was getting boring always eating in the same room. Let’s stimulate the dining experience by giving it new surroundings. Isn’t that partly what going out to eat is all about?

Anyway, I move the furniture. Regularly. This is something that literally happens. It is also a good metaphorical description of my life. I move the furniture. I move things around, shake things up, create new patterns, make pretty in fresh ways. If I want a novel perspective, I don’t acquire new things. I simply shift the heavy infrastructure of my life around. What’s really great about this is that you don’t have to plan for it. You don’t have to budget. You don’t even have to have a clear view of where the furniture will end up. It is all spontaneous change, available the instant I really need that change.

My garden is definitely an object lesson in moving the furniture. That bed isn’t working there. Or this one just seems to be wrong. Or it’s all becoming too rote, too easily exploited by predators and pests. So I shift it all around. I might call it crop rotation, but really I’m just moving the furniture.

And you never know what you will discover in the move. Sometimes actual things are uncovered. (Oh, there’s the Radiohead CD we all thought was lost! Under the guest room dresser… because reasons, I guess…) Sometimes the new paths through space help you find new paths in life. Sometimes it’s just rediscovering a feeling of home, contentment, rightness in the world. But you always find something interesting when you move the furniture.

So I move the furniture…

And it is indeed something that I look forward to!

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A word on the Wednesday Word…

I am not running a Wednesday Word contest on All Poetry this month. This is partly because I didn’t get myself organized enough to create the contest before June, nor even judge the May contest before June. But I also didn’t try very hard. Things have happened on All Poetry which makes it not as rewarding as it once was.

For starters, it seems to be increasingly colonized by proselytizing monotheists, which really isn’t my thing. That element was always out there, but it was easier to avoid it in the past. Now, I can’t create a contest without getting four or five entries that I find rather tedious, if not offensive. And my contests all bear a rule that states explicitly “no proselytizing” and makes it clear that your poem is going to be ignored if you ignore the rule. Rules apparently don’t apply to zealots.

But there is another unfortunate trend. At the beginning of the year, the website directors decided to allow “poetry” augmented by or outright created by AI. I understand why they did this. This site is partly dedicated to writing therapy. Long-time users are encouraged (sometimes strong-armed) into commenting on new writers in ways that encourage them to express themselves, to airing all the demons and hopefully exorcising them. I have been an All Poetry greeter for a while now, taking damaged young adults under my wing and gently leading them to a brighter place through words and poetic forms. My role as counselor might be made easier if these kids did not have to feel like they were doing it wrong, a hazard of all creative work. So I see how AI might be perceived as allowing them to find a voice without forcing them to learn a new skill.

The problem with that is that learning the new skill is the therapy. It’s not the expression of emotion per se that builds confidence. It’s the mastery of language. It is becoming a skilled person. It is knowing that you can create something beautiful that speaks in your own soul’s voice. I’m not sure that pushing AI’s buttons is going to have the same effect. It certainly isn’t going to make them think all that hard about what they want to say to the world and how best to say it.

And that’s where my contest comes in. It is open to anyone who wants to try to tackle the word bank, with the stipulations that I don’t like X-rated or gory writing and I really don’t like zealots of all stripes. I don’t even make them use the words or write poetry at all. I allow them to put up anything that is inspired by the word bank. So this is a contest that is rather open to abuse from artificial poetry. Just type in the four or five words and allow the computer to generate… something…

Until May, I hadn’t had any obvious AI drivel (and it is drivel!). But in May, four of the 25 entries were clearly computers spitting out word hash, and an additional one or two were sort of questionably abstruse. In all of these “poems” there was no form, no rhyme, no rhythm or word play. No alliteration (which in my view of poetry is essential, but that’s just me…). There was also no sense. No connection to the word bank — even when they used the words, which was not the case with a couple of them. But also internally, the poem itself had no cohesion or meaning. It was a bunch of words that sounded sort of impressive individually, but taken as a collective read like a jumbled list of dictionary entries.

I don’t want to read computer hash. I am not impressed by multisyllabic words with obscure definitions. I don’t like completely free verse, or whatever this was. Bad greeting cards dross, running on for forty or so lines. I really don’t feel like dealing with that right now, as pressed for time as I am. So I just took off June. I may try again in July. I may not. This may be a writing challenge without a platform soon… which makes me sad. But all good things run their course. And I’m not the only long-time All Poetry writer to leave the site. It seems like most of the poets that I respected and enjoyed have bolted. (One even tried to set up a mirror site that specifically didn’t allow AI…)

Still, I have built out the word banks for the rest of the year, so I figured I’d carry on posting them here. Maybe some of you can step into the void and write something interesting for me to savor. I promise I will not judge. In fact, that was my least favorite part… I’d rather just read poems and post glowing praise on all of them without the somewhat arbitrary ranking that goes with a contest.

With you folks, I feel pretty confident that I won’t get computer hash or proselytizing…

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Wednesday Word

for 12 June 2024

finding

You can respond in the comments below. Your response can be anything made from words. I love poetry, but anything can be poetic and you needn’t even be limited to poetics. An observation, a story, a thought. Might even be an image — however, I am not a visual person, so it has to work harder to convey meaning. In the spirit of word prompts, it’s best if you use the word; but I’m not even a stickler about that. Especially if you can convey the meaning without ever touching the word.

Even if you don’t choose to scribble, at least I’ve made you think about… finding.

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©Elizabeth Anker 2024