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…rop Frye used to say that metaphor was one of the most uncannily powerful mental tricks we possess. A metaphor suggests that two completely different objects are the same thing — i.e. that when you write “the river snaked through the forest” you are saying, in a sense, that the river is a snake. The aesthetic and cognitive force of metaphor is thus always kind of hallucinogenic. It creates mea…

What AI Thinks an Emily Dickinson Poem Looks Like
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Clive Thompson

Deborah Barchi
Sep 2, 2022

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This is absolutely fascinating, Clive. I love the way you examined the poem stanza by stanza vis a vis the AI images. Very dreamlike and oddly disconcerting. I think Emily would have been amused, and in her own at times tetchy way, flattered!

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Deborah Barchi

Written by Deborah Barchi

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Deborah Barchi has recently retired from her career as a librarian and now has time to read, explore nature, and write poetry and essays.

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