Month: maart 2018

Reading: The Day I Got My Finger Stuck Up My Nose by Brian Patten
From Liverpool poet Brian Patten (b. 1946) I have read several poems about lost or budding love and lost friendship, that I could enjoy for their direct and precise language. Patten has written many poetry books for adults and children during his long career, and is associated with poems like Philip Larkin and Alan Ginsburg. I ...
On my way home
I walk rather straight to the subway station an old hooker says fuck fuck fuck let's go fuck it is the umpteenth century there are those days that I just want to lie in the grass there are those that I want to answer my call unambiguous days, blushing in abundant sunlight days I talk ...
Reading: A Spring Song by Donald Davie
Donald Davie (1922-1995) was a rather philosophical poet and scholar. His decisively English style is strong and confident and has been likened to Larkin and Hughes. I read 'A spring song': “stooped to truth and moralized his song” Spring pricks a little. I get out the maps. Time to demoralize my song, high time. Vernal ...
Reading: Conscientious Objector by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Today I read Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). She was an important American poet was an eccentric, humorous and politically outspoken figure. She was called the 'Herald of the New Woman' by her biographer. She was a skillful writer of sonnets, and, like her contemporary Robert Frost, combined modernist attitude with traditional forms. We read ...
Reading: Young Poets by Nicanor Parra
Chilean poet Nicanor Parra (1914 - 2018) was also a mathematician, physicist and cosmologist and an important figure in Latin American poetry who won the Cervantes prize. His Poemas y Antipoemas is a classic of Latin American literature. I read 'Young poets' in a translation by Miller Williams: Young Poets Write as you will In whatever style you ...
Reading: White Comedy by Benjamin Zephaniah
Benjamin Zephaniah (b. 1958) is a British-Jamaican poet who has considerable influence in contemporary poetry. He was born in Birmingham to a Barbadian father and Jamaican mother. As a child, he developed dyslexia and was imprisoned for burglary. He is also the author of novels for teenagers and a notable animal rights activist. He refused ...
Grijs
We zitten tegenover elkaar in een café. "Je haar wordt grijs, dat zie ik in het zonlicht" zegt ze. Ik glimlach. Het is me nu al een paar keer gezegd. Het is een eerste verschijnsel van ouderdom, een vingerwijzing dat ik langzaam plaats moet maken voor de volgende generatie. En toch kan ik het, wil ...
Ethics and Artificial Intelligence
Without further ado, let's assume the AI has all information available and imagine a debate with the world's foremost human intellectual. The AI will have a flawless argument that takes into account all the information in a superhuman fashion a human intellectual can never attain. Its rational reasoning is far superior. Recall the 2016 victory ...
All is mathematics
The wind is mathematics, and your tear ducts me insisting we continue, the curvature of your smile the rock you sat down on, the ocean that sighed in your stead the proof that life is a theorem, which can never be proven to be one