Notices by dogtrax (dogtrax@mastodon.social), page 2

Further poetic explorations with the Open AI tool, which I had used for poetry a few days ago and continue onward with revealing a poem ... https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQft6r3HFEqkQK5a2beC6aGWzr8vuhw8uUdskL5ZjTukfv4zpgRjG04gW23pWkeaZh_obXLgmQocnjq/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000 #improvisart

info/process notes at my blog: http://dogtrax.edublogs.org/2019/05/21/one-step-further-collaborating-with-ai-open/

We were deep into a class discussion about The Battle of Gettysburg and the Civil War -- the setting for the novel we are reading entitled The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg -- when a young student from the front row asks, Were all slave owners bad? To which I replied: If you were someone who owned another human being, that was wrong, bad, reprehensible. Period. (I think what he was wondering is, Were some slaves treated better than others. My response still stands.) #smallstories

@reto

All dark,
illuminated
by spark --
this distraction
becomes the love
I need

#smallpoems remix through re-organization. Thx for adding a poem to the mix the morning

Some poems write
themselves —
they twist and turn
into something new

This one — barely
used — refused

#smallpoems

“I thought of my own art, of my desire to represent through force of line rather than shade. And I wanted to gather all of this light into myself, to remember and draw it.”

- from Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan, page 295

#smallquotes

@Hugh

"The tape-recorder stops, and the lead is unplugged. Job done."

:)

Thanks for the inside look at your collaboration

#MusicCollab

"The Pale Green Pants" by Seuss often comes up in discussions about tales that freaked people out as kids. I thought of it yesterday as I was reading in the sun on our deck. The wind had picked up. My son's baseball pants and shirt were drying on the railing. A few stiff breezes started the empty pants moving, and then the empty shirt, too. At one point, an arm of the shirt slowly, gently lifted and landed on the pants, like a hug. As if they weren't being watched. It was weird. #smallstories

These sounds of this lost night --
your breath lingering in my ear,
as if I were another seashell collector --
a huckster with a story to tell --
these are are your words, all tangled up
beyond articulation, twisting along the insides
as smooth as glass, my fingertips gliding
over it all, a gentle hum that comes from
a gentle touch --
We are reduced to tone and noise
and heart and patterns

#smallpoems

-- inspired by #improvisart -- Note: formatting is odd here. Go https://write.as/dogtrax/these-sounds-of-this-lost-night

“The many pages of paper bound simply together as a book are binding the lives of many people together, too.”

-- from A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, edited by Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick, from a letter by John Maeda, page 230

#smallquotes

You don’t often see people ‘falling to the floor, laughing.’ It’s a figure of speech. But put kids into the mix and anything can happen. One of my students this afternoon said something so unexpectedly funny (to herself, at least) that she collapsed gently to the ground in laughter and stayed there, giggling on the carpet, as we all laughed with her. Such giggling is highly contagious in a group of 12 year olds (and one teacher). I made sure she was OK and our day ended on smiles. #smallstories

@sikkdays yeah.

Random Access Poetry: Day Twenty Four

Some days wash colors
away, leaving us only with
shadows and light, in black
and white; we wander
through, not sure what to do

#smallpoems

Inspired by image https://www.flickr.com/photos/myreflex/254944671/

“We all have snippets rolling around, not just stories we tell, just photos that refuse to fade entirely away. These are the framed moments that decide a life and are lost to art because they aren’t complete, have no resolution.”

-- The Art of the Wasted Day, by Patricia Hampl, page 100

#smallquotes

@PinkCathodeCat I thin pieces of poems could work, if you had the heart to do that ... maybe as teasers to the larger piece? Just an idea. #smallpoems have big hearts ...

Three times, I witnessed a teenage boy leaning in close to a flowering tree with his phone. Once by the library. Once by the Sojourner Truth statue. Once on a sidewalk. Three times in two hours of running errands. The same boy. Each time, he held a budding branch in hand — gently, not hurting the tree — taking pics. I’d like to think it was just wonder at the changes afoot but it is probably a school assignment. In either case, he was closely attuned to the natural world. #smallstories