ATTN: Tim Cook

My surroundings already are “an infinite canvas.” I suspect that yours are too.

[I don’t discount the possible usefulness of a headset for people with vision troubles. But reality itself is already an infinite canvas.]

Mark Hurst on Vision Pro

Mark Hurst, who led a charge against Google Glass ten years ago, has now written about Apple’s Vision Pro headset, or as he calls it, Vision No:

What imitation of vision there is in the device, exists only as machine vision, continually scanning both inside and out. A phalanx of cameras monitors the user’s eyes in order to display them on the device’s front panel, while other cameras spy on the room layout, the furniture, and the people nearby — as the user’s eyes are locked away inside the Vision No enclosure. The only way for users to see anything is to accept the representation of the world as offered by the corporation’s filters. I don’t know about you, but my grip on reality — incomplete and imperfect as it may be — will not improve by passing through the hidden manipulations of a two-trillion-dollar company with an insatiable need for growth.

I recently listened to a Mac-centric podcast whose hosts were enthusiastic about Vision Pro. Two grown-ups excited about — it’s their example — the prospect of looking at spreadsheets on the top of a mountain. A virtual mountain, that is, a digital wallpaper that replaces your surroundings. Neil Postman suggested asking six questions about any new technology. The first one alone poses a problem for Vision Pro: “What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?”

A related post
My surroundings already are “an infinite canvas”

[I hadn’t realized that the device displays one’s eyes on the screen. Eyes without a face! That’s beyond creepy.]

Helen Keller’s sources

The New York Review Books volume of Helen Keller’s writing, The World I Live In (2012), has a few pages of notes identifying sources for quoted material, but many such passages are left unidentified. Having looked up the unidentified bits in Keller’s prose (thank you, Google Books), I thought it appropriate to share them here, for anyone who might looking. They reflect a great breadth of reading and are someimes quoted imperfectly, from memory perhaps, or from a faulty source.

Format: quoted material, page number in the NYRB edition, source. I have left poetry unlineated where Keller quotes it without line breaks.

From The World I Live In (1908)

“there’s a sound so fine, nothing lives ’twixt it and silence” (10)

A sound so fine, there's nothing lives
’Twixt it and silence.

James Sheridan Knowles, Virginius, 5.2 (1820)

*

"Kind letters that betray the heart’s deep history,
In which we feel the presence of a hand” (16)

Kind messages, that pass from land to land;
Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history,
In which we feel the pressure of a hand —
One touch of fire, — and all the rest is mystery!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dedication to The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)

*

“dormouse valor” (10)

To awake your dormouse valor, to put fire in your heart, and brimstone in your liver.

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601–1602)

*

                                                        “may right
Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,
And rush exultant on the Infinite” (96)

                                                Jehovah Lord,
Make room for rest, around me! out of sight
Now float me of the vexing land abhorred,
Till in deep calms of space my soul may right
Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,
And rush exultant on the Infinite.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Finite and Infinite” (1850)

*

“put life and mettle into their heels” (105)

But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.

Robert Burns, “Tam o’Shanter” (1791)

*

“idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean” (105)

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1834 text)

*

“high and disposedly” like Queen Elizabeth (106)

Agnes Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England (1840–1848). When Sir James Melville, envoy from Mary, Queen of Scots, was asked by Elizabeth which queen was the better dancer, Melville said that Mary danced ”not so high or disposedly“ as Elizabeth. Strickland takes that to mean that Mary danced like ”an elegant lady.“

*

“a rakish craft” (110)

’Twas Fiddledeedee who put to sea
With a rollicking buccaneer Bumblebee:
An acorn-cup was their hollow boat —
A rakish craft was their acorn-boat

Madison Julius Cawein, The Giant and the Star: Little Annals in Rhyme (1909)

*

From “Optimism: An Essay” (1903)

“the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest” (136)

Thou are the source and centre of all minds,
Their only point of rest, eternal word!

William Cowper, “The Task” (1785)

*

“the evil but ‘a halt on the way to good’” (136–137)

The world an image of the divine, everything perfect of its kind, the bad simply a halt on the way to the good.

Richard Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy from Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time (1893). From a chapter about Nicolas of Cusa.

*

“labored, foredone, in the field and at the workshop, like haltered horses, if blind, so much the quieter” (138)

The dull millions that, in the workshop or furrowfield, grind foredone at the wheel of Labour, like haltered gin-horses, if blind so much the quieter?

Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution (1837)

*

“Now touching goal, now backward hurl’d,
Toils the indomitable world” (141)

Now touching goal, now backward hurled —
Toils the indomitable world

William Watson, “The Father of the Forest” (1912)

*

“There are no substitutes for common sense, patience, integrity, and courage.” (144)

Harvard Baccalaureate Sermon, June 18, 1899. Author unidentified.

*

“whose bones lie on the mountains cold” (145)

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
        Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold

John Milton, Sonnet 18 [On the Late Massacre in Piedmont] (1655)

*

“Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth this autumn morning!” (152)

Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,
This autumn morning!

Robert Browning, “James Lee’s Wife” (1864)

*

“fashion of the smiling face” (153)

And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face.

Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Christmas Sermon” (1888)

*

“Drill your thoughts,” he said; “shut out the gloomy and call in the bright. There is more wisdom in shutting one’s eyes than your copybook philosophers will allow.” (153)

He records in his early diary how he said to a friend, depressed by painful reflections, “Drill your thoughts — shut out the gloomy, and call in the bright. There is more wisdom in ‘shutting one’s eyes,’ than your copy-book philosophers will allow.”

Letters of John Richard Green, ed. Leslie Stephen (1901). Green was an English historian.

*

“pasteboard passions and desires” (154)

After our little hour of strut and rave,
    With all our pasteboard passions and desires

James Russell Lowell, “Commemoration Ode” [Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration] (1865)

*

“They are more precious than gold of Ophir. They are love and goodness and truth and hope, and their price is above rubies and sapphires.” (158)

Biblical phrasing. For instance: “It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire”; “No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies” (Job 28:16 and 18, King James Verson).

*

“the achievements of the warrior are like his canvas city, ‘today a camp, to-morrow all struck and vanished, a few pit-holes and heaps of straw’” (159)

Truly it is a mortifying thing for your Conqueror to reflect, how perishable is the metal which he hammers with such violence: how the kind earth will soon shroud-up his bloody foot-prints; and all that he achieved and skilfully piled together will be but like his own “canvas city” of a camp, — this evening loud with life, tomorrow all struck and vanished, ”a few earth-pits and heaps of straw!”

Thomas Carlyle, “Voltaire” (1829)

*

“paints yet more glorious triumphs on the cloud–curtain of the future” (160)

Seldom can the unhappy be persuaded that the evil of the day is sufficient for it; and the ambitious will not be content with present splendour, but paints yet more glorious triumphs, on the cloud-curtain of the future.

Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times” (1829)

*

From “My Story” (1894)

“though fled fore’er the light” (166)

’Tis as the light itself of God were fled —
So dark is all around, so still, so dead;
Nor hope of change, one ray I find!
Yet must submit, though fled fore’er the light,
Though utter silence bring me double night,
Though to my insulated mind
Knowledge her richest pages ne’er unfold,
And “human face divine” I ne’er behold
Yet must submit, must be resigned.

Morrison Heady, The Double Night (1869). Heady was a deafblind poet. The Double Night is a long poem, dedicated “to the Shades of Milton and Beethoven.”

*

“How the beavers built their lodges,
Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
Why the rabbit was so timid” (171)

Of all the beasts he learned the language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How the beavers built their lodges,
Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
Why the rabbit was so timid,
Talked with them whene’er he met them,
Called them “Hiawatha’s Brothers.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

*

“Into each life some rain must fall” (177)

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
    Some days must be dark and dreary.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Rainy Day” (1842)

*

“Love, — no other word we utter, Can so sweet and precious be” (179)

Trust —no other word we utter
    Can so sweet and precious be,
Tuning all life’s jarring discords
Into heavenly harmony!

Herbert Newbury, “The Sweetest Word” (1867)

*

“Love is everything! And God is Love!” (179)

These words seem to be Helen Keller’s own. They are introduced thusly: “Every day brings me some new joy, some fresh token of love from distant friends, until in the fullness of my glad heart, I cry: ‘Love is everything! And God is Love!’”

Three related posts
Helen Keller on horizons : On lines : On tolerance

ChatGPT’s twenty-line poems

I asked ChatGPT to produce twenty-line poems in the styles of major American poets. A number of tentative conclusions: ChatGPT has difficulty distinguishing “in the style of” from a hazy idea of subject matter. And ChatGPT assumes that almost all poets write in quatrains of iambic tetrameter, with clumsy rhymes and inspirational messages. At times I was reminded of the calypso section of John Ashbery’s “Variations, Calypso and Fugue on a Theme of Ella Wheeler Wilcox”:

Gazing at the Alps was quite a sight
I felt the tears flow forth with all their might

A climb to the Acropolis meant a lot to me
I had read the Greek philosophers you see

Here are the exhibits. Chat GPT didn’t provide titles for its poems. You may provide a laugh track.

With Emily Dickinson, Chat GPT appeared unable to distinguish “in the style of” from “about”:

A life of simplicity,
With words that cut like knife,
Her thoughts, so deep and true,
Still echo through the time.

Her spirit, wild and free,
Her verse, a mystery,
A world of insight and power,
A soul that feels no cower.

A heart that knew true pain,
A mind that sought refuge in verse,
A voice that spoke of love, loss,
And truths that we still traverse.

Her quill, a tool of grace,
Her words, a healing place,
For those who seek a meaning,
Her legacy, still gleaming.

So let us raise a glass,
To Emily, our guiding star,
Whose words still touch our hearts,
And will forever be a part.

ChatGPT has a little information about Gertrude Stein:

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,
A simple statement that everyone knows,
It’s a symbol of beauty and grace,
A color that brings a smile to our face.

But words and their meanings are complex,
And the truth of what we say is often vexed,
So we repeat and repeat with care,
To make sure the meaning is always there.

And Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,
A reminder of all that nature bestows,
A symbol of life, and its constant flow,
Of growth and renewal, in rain or in snow.

So we hold tight to the words we say,
And the truth that they hold, every day,
For Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,
And its meaning will never, ever, go.

Wallace Stevens GPT exhorts us to cherish and bask in beauty:

The world is a dream, a mirage of hue,
A dance of shadows, a play of light and dew.
Its beauty lies in the eye of the beholder,
A kaleidoscope of colors, forever bolder.

The sky is a canvas, a masterpiece of blue,
The clouds, a symphony, a chorus of hues.
The trees sway in the breeze, like an endless show,
A gentle rhythm, a song of life that flows.

The stars shine like diamonds, in the endless night,
A constellation of wonders, so distant, so bright.
The moon is a mystery, a story untold,
A whisper of secrets, that forever unfold.

So let us embrace this world with open hearts,
With grace and wonder, with joy and art.
Let us cherish its beauty, its mystery and might,
And bask in its splendor, till the end of light.

ChatGPT has enough information about William Carlos Williams to produce a poem about a red wheelbarrow while avoiding meter and rhyme. But that’s about all it has:

The red wheelbarrow
Glazed with rainwater
beside the white chickens.
A simple thing,
yet so much depends
on its functional grace.
The tool of the farmer,
carrying weight with ease,
rolling through fields of green.
A symbol of hard work,
of the toil and sweat
that brings sustenance to life.
Without the wheelbarrow,
the farm would grind to a halt,
leaving only emptiness.
But with it, the earth yields
a bounty to be shared,
nourishing body and soul.
So let us give thanks
for the red wheelbarrow,
a humble hero of the land.

Langston Hughes GPT has “heard the blues.” He too wants us to appreciate beauty. Because poets love beauty:

Verse 1:
I’ve seen the sunset, orange and gold
Over fields of cotton, the story untold
Of those who worked the land, in scorching sun
    and rain
With calloused hands, they toiled, they sought to
    sustain

Chorus:
For I am a child of the earth, so rich and so bold
With a spirit unbroken, a soul that won’t fold
I sing for the weary, the tired, the worn
For the ones who’ve been burdened, it’s a brand
    new morn

Verse 2: I’ve heard the blues, the lament of the night
With a voice that’s so sorrowful, but filled with
    delight
For it tells of the struggles, the pain, the strife
Of a people seeking justice, a better life

Chorus:
For I am, &c.

Verse 3:
I’ve walked the streets, of cities so bright
With neon lights, and the sounds of the night
For the Harlem Renaissance, it was a time of pride
With artists and writers, who sought to defy the tide

Chorus:
For I am, &c.

Outro:
So let my voice echo, through the streets and the
    skies
For all to hear, for all to realize
The beauty in life, the beauty in rhyme
For a brighter tomorrow, for a future that’s truly
    mine.

John Ashbery GPT also encourages us to appreciate beauty. And look — he’s plagiarizing Wallace Stevens GPT:

The world is a strange and shifting place,
A maze of colors, sounds, and shapes.
Its mysteries are infinite, untold,
A labyrinth of secrets waiting to unfold.

The trees sway in the wind, the rivers flow,
The sky is vast, and the clouds aglow.
The world is a never-ending surprise,
A constant change, a flicker in the eyes.

But even in this chaos, there is peace,
A stillness that whispers, a gentle release.
The world is a tapestry, woven with care,
A masterpiece of life, beyond compare.

So let us embrace this world with open arms,
With wonder and grace, with joy and charm.
Let us cherish its beauty, its secrets untold,
And bask in its radiance, till we grow old.

Frank O’Hara GPT wants to stay in the city:

I am walking down the street,
The city’s lights shining bright,
I hear the sounds of cars and feet,
As people hurry through the night.

I feel the wind blow through my hair,
And see the stars up in the sky,
It's moments like this I can’t compare,
This feeling makes me want to fly.

I think of all the friends I’ve made,
The memories that will last a lifetime,
And I’m so grateful that I’ve stayed,
In this place that’s always been so kind.

I see the city’s endless rows,
Of buildings tall and grand,
And I know that everyone knows,
This is where they want to stand.

So I’ll keep walking down the street,
With a smile upon my face,
And I’ll remember this moment sweet,
This time and this place.

And then I wondered: what if I tried an unmajor poet? Here’s Amanda Gorman GPT:

Verse 1:
Amidst the night, I stand so tall
With words that carry weight, words that will
    enthrall
My voice a beacon, a lighthouse in the sea
Of doubts and fears, it’s a symbol of freedom,
    you’ll see

Chorus:
For I am a child of the earth and its fire
With a spirit unbreakable, a soul that won’t tire
I speak for the silenced, the broken, the torn
For the ones who’ve been crushed, it’s a brand new
    dawn

Verse 2:
My pen is mightier than the sword they say
With each word I write, I pave a brighter way
For those who’ve been oppressed, I am their voice
With my words I heal, with my words I rejoice

Chorus:
For I am a child of the earth, &c.

Verse 3:
The world is listening, and I won’t be still
With every rhyme, every line, I will uplift and heal
For I know what it’s like to live in pain
But now I rise, now I soar, and I won’t refrain

Chorus:
For I am a child of the earth, &c.

Outro:
So let my voice echo far and wide
For all to hear, for all to take pride
In the power of words, the power of rhyme
For a brighter tomorrow, for a future that’s truly
    mine.

With that chorus, Amanda Gorman GPT is ripping off Langston Hughes GPT. And Gorman GPT repeats the same curious verse-chorus-outro structure. But that structure isn’t reserved for Black poets. T.S. Eliot GPT uses it too:

In the still of the night, I hear the city moan
With the sounds of the traffic, a symphony alone
For the city is alive, with a life of its own
And the shadows they dance, to a rhythm unknown

Chorus:
For I am a part of the world, a part of the scene
With a mind that’s so restless, a soul that’s so lean
I wander the streets, in a daze and a trance
In search of the truth, in search of a chance

Verse 2:
In the heart of the city, I see the people move
With a pace that’s so frantic, they’ve got nothing to
    prove
For the city is a maze, with a life that’s so cruel
And the ones who get lost, they’re just another fool

Chorus:
For I am a part of the world, &c.

Verse 3:
In the mind of the city, I feel the emptiness grow
With the weight of the world, it’s a burden I know
For the city is a world, with a life that’s so low
And the ones who find peace, they’re just letting
    it go

Chorus:
For I am a part of the world, &c.

Outro:
So let my words flow, with a rhythm so pure
For all to hear, for all to endure
For a world that’s so bleak, for a world that’s so true
For a future that’s bright, for a future that’s brand
    new.

I was hoping for “A future that’s bright, for me and for you.” I guess I’ll have to write my own poem.

*

When I showed Elaine these bot efforts, she suggested trying Charles Bukowski. Why hadn’t I thought of him? Perhaps because I sold my Bukowski books some years ago.

Beneath the streetlights, I stand and ponder,
Of all the drinks I’ve had, the nights I’ve squandered.
With worn out shoes, and a broken soul,
I roam the streets, seeking a new goal.

The city is alive, with neon lights,
And laughter ringing in the endless nights.
I walk the alleys, with a bottle in hand,
Looking for solace, in this lonely land.

The raindrops fall, like tears from above,
As I remember the women I’ve loved.
With lipstick stains, on cigarette butts,
I find comfort, in my drunken ruts.

I write my thoughts, in a crumpled notebook,
Of life on the edge, and the streets I took.
With every word, I pour out my heart,
And hope to capture, what tears me apart.

So I’ll keep drinking, and I’ll keep writing,
Until I find meaning, in this endless fighting.
For in the words, and in the whiskey’s flow,
I’ll find redemption, and a way to grow.

Even Bukowski ends with a message of hope. On his gravestone though: “DON’T TRY.”

Related posts
A 100-word blog post generated by ChatGPT : I’m sorry too, ChatGPT : Spot the bot : Teachers and chatbots : Imaginary lines from real poems : ChatGPT writes about Lillian Mountweazel : Rob Zseleczky on computer-generated poetry