ChatGPT fail

Ted Berrigan’s “Red Shift” is one my favorite poems. You can read “Red Shift” and hear the poet read it courtesy of PennSound. Last night I asked ChatGPT to write a 500-word analysis:

“Red Shift” is a poem by Ted Berrigan, a prominent American poet and member of the New York School of poetry. The poem is a short and fragmented, but packs a powerful punch through its imagery and use of language.

The poem begins with the image of a “red shift,” which is a phenomenon in astronomy where light from distant objects appears to be red-shifted, indicating that the object is moving away from the observer. This image sets the tone for the rest of the poem, which explores themes of distance and separation.

The poem’s first stanza describes the red shift as a “faint, red light,” suggesting that the phenomenon is distant and hard to see. This imagery is symbolic of the distance and separation that the speaker is experiencing. The second stanza describes the red shift as “a signal of loss,” further emphasizing the theme of separation.

The third stanza describes the red shift as a “siren song,” evoking the image of a distant, haunting sound that is both alluring and dangerous. This imagery is symbolic of the speaker’s longing for something that is out of reach, and the danger of getting too close. The fourth stanza describes the red shift as a “final light,” suggesting that the phenomenon is the last thing the speaker sees before the separation is complete.

The fifth stanza describes the red shift as a “memory,” suggesting that the phenomenon is something that the speaker remembers, but can no longer see. This imagery is symbolic of the speaker’s longing for something that is now in the past. The final stanza describes the red shift as a “dream,” suggesting that the phenomenon is something that the speaker wishes for, but may never happen.

Throughout the poem, Berrigan uses vivid imagery to create a sense of distance and separation. The imagery of the red shift is symbolic of the speaker’s longing for something that is out of reach, and the danger of getting too close. The poem’s fragmented structure is also effective in conveying the sense of separation and longing, as the speaker jumps from image to image without any clear narrative.

Overall, “Red Shift” is a powerful and evocative poem that explores themes of distance and separation through vivid imagery and a fragmented structure. Berrigan’s use of the red shift as a symbol for the speaker’s longing for something that is out of reach is particularly effective, as it evokes a sense of longing and distance that is both alluring and dangerous.

ChatGPT came up short, in more ways than one. The text it generated is only 417 words, but no matter, because the words aren’t about the poem. I thought that the bot might have latched onto a song lyric, but searching for red shift, faint red light, signal of loss, and so on turns up nothing.

“There are certain trifles I do not forgive”: what would John Shade say about this effort?

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“Yeats is always sincere”

John Shade opines. Like James Boswell before him, Charles Kinbote records.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962).

Also from Pale Fire
Aunt Maud’s clippings : Chthonic, grimpen, sempiternal : Index cards : “Insert before a professional” : “What emperor?”

Phish identification

From the Apple-centric TidBITS: Adam Engst’s “An Annotated Field Guide to Identifying Phish.” Worth reading carefully — just as with sketchy e-mails.

Spot the bot

The New York Times has a challenge: read ten short pieces of writing and figure out which ones were generated by a chatbot and which ones were written by children.

I got nine of ten right. (I was tricked by one small feature in one passage.)

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Teachers and chatbots

In the news today: “Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach“ (The New York Times).

If I were still teaching, I’d adopt five strategies to counter the chatbots:

~ I’d assign frequent short in-class writing and make and keep copies of all work.

~ I’d assign longer out-of-class writing with highly specific prompts, and I’d test those prompts against the chatbots, provided that I can get through. (ChatGPT always seems to be at capacity lately.)

~ I’d require that students meet with me to talk over their ideas for outside-of-class writing.

~ I’d ask students to initial out-of-class writing before turning it in, to signify that what they’re turning in is their own work.

~ And I’d remind students that just as a cashier can immediately sense that a bill is counterfeit, and just as an appraiser can immediately sense that a work is a fake, a professor of English can immediately sense, or at least suspect, that written work is not genuine student writing. (Yes, it’s true.)

Irony, irony: It’d be especially wonderful if the rise of chatbots were to bring about a resurgence of writing by hand. Not cursive, just writing by hand.

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[Why keep copies of in-class writing? To have at least a rough sense of a student’s writing for when out-of-class writing comes due.]

Education and freedom

From The New Yorker: Charlayne Hunter-Gault writes about meeting Martin Luther King, summer 1961:

I ran up to him, prepared to introduce myself and to lavish praise on him for all that he had done for Atlanta and the students, and for his sacrifices on behalf of black Americans. As I started to introduce myself —before I could get past my name — he reached for my hand, energetically shaking it, while telling me he was proud to meet me. “You are doing a such magnificent job down there,” he said, a reference to my enrollment at the all-white University of Georgia, where Hamilton Holmes and I were the first African-American students to attend earlier that year. As I recalled, in a book I wrote years later, King told me that education “was the key to our freedom, and then he generously thanked me again and wished me success.”

Which reminds me of something from a 2020 episode of American Public Media’s podcast Educate, “Is learning to read a constitutional right?” From Helen Moore, a Detroit resident, then eighty-three, described as “fighting for better schools for more than fifty years“:

“Listen: here’s the secret. If you can’t read, you can’t do anything else. It’s the doorway to education. Reading is the basis of freedom as far as we’re concerned as Black people.”

MLK

From “Give Us the Ballot,” addressed to the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, at the Lincoln Memorial, May 17, 1957, three years after Brown v. Board of Education:

Three years ago the Supreme Court of this nation rendered in simple, eloquent, and unequivocal language a decision which will long be stenciled on the mental sheets of succeeding generations. For all men of goodwill, this May seventeenth decision came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of human captivity. It came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of disinherited people throughout the world who had dared only to dream of freedom.

Unfortunately, this noble and sublime decision has not gone without opposition. This opposition has often risen to ominous proportions. Many states have risen up in open defiance. The legislative halls of the South ring loud with such words as “interposition” and “nullification.”

But even more, all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition. And so our most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929.

On Arthur Avenue

Last Sunday it was no. 2390. This Sunday I’m still on Arthur Avenue, famed street of Italian-American culture, and today I’m admiring Arthur Avenue Noodle & Macaroni Manufacturing. I love the words beneath the company name: “di pura semola.” And I love the 6 in the window. It’s not often that you see anything selling for 6¢. Maybe nails in a hardware store.

[Arthur Avenue Noodle & Macaroni Manufacturing, 2376 Arthur Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

You can see AAN&MM with a different sign in an earlier photograph, found by an assiduous reader. Squint past the pushcarts.

Until recently, no. 2376 was the home of Arthur Avenue Fiasco, an Italian restaurant. “Permanently closed,” says Google Maps. The restaurant’s Facebook page is still up, but the restaurant’s website is gone.

I must mention: in the Italian-American world of my mom’s childhood, all pasta was homemade. None of this manufactured stuff. My mom’s grandmother did the work, cutting by eye with great accuracy. Even spaghetti.

And if you’re wondering about the difference about macaroni and noodles — I am too. That’s a rabbit hole I will eye from a distance, through a manicotti telescope. The distinction might be between tubular and non-tubular pasta, but in Italy, maccheroni can refer to both.

Coming next week, nos. 2374 and 2378. Worth waiting for, believe me.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

“Fritzi Ritz is my co-pilot!”

Zippy loves Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy and Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Still awaiting Griffith’s Some Rocks: The Ernie Bushmiller Story.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is a solid sender, with fifteen-letter answers crossing at the center, ten-letter answers in two triple stacks and two double stacks, and considerable novelty. Many stacks, but no OREOS in this puzzle.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, ten letters, “They help you get a grip around greens.” Which greens?

2-D, ten letters, “Strike that moves the needle.” Pretty novel.

7-D, fifteen letters, “Golda Meir received the first one (1952).” At least a partial giveaway — the answer, I mean.

15-A, ten letters, “Member of West Point’s ‘class the stars fell on’ (1915).” I guessed right.

18-A, ten letters, “KQED or WNYC.” I love it.

23-A, eight letters, “Winning number?” Maybe. Possibly. Hope so.

28-A, three letters, “Cover nickname on 13 People issues (1975-1991).” The answer is a trace of a lost world, when magazines and tabloid newspapers were stacked at the supermarket checkout.

32-D, ten letters, “Music Icons stamp honoree (2022).” Our household has four sheets.

33-A, five letters, “City in Cather’s O Pioneers!” That title comes from Walt Whitman.

37-A, fifteen letters, “Buck passer’s dismissal.” Nicely colloquial.

43-A, four letters, “Informal meeting, these days.” Do people say it, or just write it?

46-A, five letters, “Jockey’s burden.” At least figuratively.

56-D, four letters, “New stock issue.” Clever.

64-A, six letters, “Flat surfaces.” Easy, but a fun clue.

Two clues whose answers leave me baffled:

6-D, five letters, “Porcine plunderer’s pop” and 16-D, five letters, “Recently past.” Did something go wrong in the editing?

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

*

There are now explanations of the bafflers in the comments.