Stephen T Casper

Got an angle?
Tell me a story.
“Once there was an #angel
He fell from the sky.
No he wasn’t Lucifer.
But he was Mickey Finn.
As a mortal, a slip of a man.
Converted the unwilling.
Dressed them naked,
as props for for his play.
With a choir of demons,
a man in Our Town.”
How’s that editor?
#vss365

RIP: Margaret W. Rossiter

Have an argument with ChatGPT about Shakespeare Sonnet 8. It’s a wild trip as it talks itself into the literal meanings (they are talking about music) only to say “no it’s about marriage” to which I reply “oh come on “strikes each other by mutual ordering” and it’s like… ok it is about sex.

In the face of absurdity, they manage to add tragedy.

Lacking in modesty, being unwilling to imagine that world and universe are larger than all things we can collectively imagine, they slowly insist that we curl into a fetal pose and do nothing.

They pretend to know things but refuse to help others understand. They bemoan their exhaustion but never believe that others might do more caretaking than they do, and when confronted by facts that show otherwise, imply that privilege or the home explain this.

They make meetings endless but resist following best practices. They jam up decision making by focusing on processes, while undermining those processes every time.

They expect perfection without recognition that trying is sublime. They seem in each unfinished book or poem or drawing or text, proof of inadequacy.

Being unwilling to engage deeply for a year with a text, they cannot imagine that someone else might have engaged deeply with a whole corpus.

One might term them bullies but they’re too wooden and hollow to be able to be bullies, and to capricious and inconstant to throw effective elbows. They are thorny without roses, prickly without a pears, and pointed without being sharp. Having no ideas themselves, they worry about ideas in others.

Officious and opaque, lacking in integrity and avidly defensive of their mediocre peers, unwilling to contemplate that standards can exist, brimming with hate for other disciplines, and completely unwilling to use care and help in their relationality.

They appear closed off from the worlds they inhabit, bereft of empathy, complain of burnout and suspect others who seem to enjoy study, unread and unstudied, suspicious of change and experimentation, unwilling to see art, music, literature as things that are also to be appreciated, and narrow.

I, however, increasingly think that no group is maybe more responsible for the decline of the humanities than this subculture of critics.

They seem confused, solipsistic, dense and defensive, filled with combative animosity, reactionary and resentful, ready to assume the worse - always.

I find it curious that it doesn’t occur ever that I might have thought about that deeply and come to a different conclusion.

One could, I think, say that the weakness is mine because I did not communicate clearly.

The critique seems to be:

“you really don’t know what the humanities are”

And for this reason the subtext is: “you are flawed” or “disrespectful” or “a poser” or something.

It’s always opaque.

I am a humanist and a social scientist who does deeply interdisciplinary work.

I confess to finding the attitudes of certain humanists, usually anonymous peer reviewers or subtweet anonymous accounts, quite puzzling.

Dew drops on a leaf,
A gentle breeze pushing it,
a spider’s web beneath,
which tethers its relatives into a trap,
over nature’s #charms,
themselves, cleverly evolved,
to make new leaves where none grew before,
there a spider waits,
hunger and hope,
for its bait,
drawn by another’s fate

#vss365

Awww but that’s where you are wrong

#vss365

“Turn that smile upside down missy.”
Jesus. Why do they comment on… just fuck.
“It’s a #scowl.”
“Awww…. Rhymes with owl. You wise like an owl? What’ll it be?”
I could screech.
“Blueberry muffin.”
“Blueberry muffin PLEASE.”
“What?”
“You forgot to say please. I’m not a servant to you girl.”

No. I just try to write poetry daily. #vss365 is a precious writers’forum that grounds me — words may yet save us!

The system isn’t broken. Democrats aren’t fighting for the system. That’s a large difference. Turns out if you have no moral fiber and bend in whatever direction seems good at the time, people think you are a wimp and won’t get things done. And, honestly, the people ain’t wrong about that.

My morning #mischief
is rather peaceful if dull,
Some mindless carbs
a chug of cafe-au-lair (pun intended)
All as I stare
Then mull
OpEd writers’ stupid barbs
But! This sunrise,
brought surprise.
A large mastiff,
My wife’s new attire
for my morn’s lull,
a mutt so big, I’m scared!
#vss365

Yeah… the only thing more unfavorable is… the opposition party.

Could it be because they refuse to show any moral fiber?

The “writer’s curse”
is to read immersed
in that which few readers
willing nurse
with patience first,
a #hum that is learned in ancient verse.

Then to write in bursts,
knowing no one,
not even editors,
wants words —
where screens suffice
to make art disburse:
drip, drip, drip.

#vss365

Please tell me dear tech bros: how will you even know what to ask the LLM to find out the history? Meanwhile, I’m thinking I can now do your job, and in a few LLMs from now, better than you can.

lol I would be far more concerned that historians and philosophers might take over with this technology. Being an historian isn’t simply a set of techniques and methods, it is also a way of thinking and seeing across forms of knowledge and information.

If you think about it, it’s clear that we live in a Salvador Dali painting

Autumn Twilight Pathway

#vss365

Elegant
Leaves
Moving,

Endless
Longing
Memories,

Each —
Lengthening
Meaningfully.

Ending
Lazy
Monotony.

#Elms,
Locusts,
Maples:

Evenings
Lush
Muse.

Eternity.
Living
Moment to moment.

#acrostic

#vss365

Dearest, I thought about buying you #sapphires, I thought about buying you flowers, I even thought about taking you dancing. I thought about it But I realized you could take yourself dancing.So I got a Porsche, took a vacation, got $$$ cocktails & had fun on my own
Love ya!
PS Don’t stay up

It does dawn on one