Episode 195: Flaubert with a Chicago Accent (with special guest Jay Newton)

We’re celebrating National Poetry Month a month too late, but we think it’s always time to celebrate poetry. To that end, we’ve invited Jay Newton, long-time listener and Erasable Poet Laureate, onto the show to talk about his new chapbook, Effigies, and how he thinks about and creates poetry. We also celebrate silly little limericks by pitting Jay against ChatGPT to write extremely specific pencil limericks.

Show Notes and Links

Erasable Patreon

New Zelda Game

Field Notes Cityscapes

Musgrave’s The Party Bugle

New Musgrave Shorthand Notebook in BLUE

Magic Ink markers

Big ol’ pressed penny notebook

Baronfig Venture Backpack 3.0

PennyCollector.org

Limerick Showdown

Here are the poems that we asked Jay and ChatGPT to write. Read them and judge them!

Limerick about the struggle of using a pencil with an off-center core (from Donny Pearce)

ChatGPT:

With graphite askew, pencil's no fun,

Off-center core makes writing undone.

The lines dance in strife,

Disrupting the life,

Of precision, alas, it's all gone.

Jay:

If there’s one thing I simply abhor,

It’s a stick with an off-center core.

It may write as smoothly as Lapis Lazuli

But some things I just can’t ignore.

Limerick about how the Field Notes pencils should be better than they are (from Donny Pearce)

Jay:

The pencil from Draplin is lacking.

Does he not have financial backing?

It scratches the page

Like a one-million H

While Musgrave is counter-attacking.

ChatGPT:

Field Notes pencils, touted with cheer,

But their performance fails, I do fear.

Smoothness they lack,

Graphite too slack,

In need of improvement, that's clear.

Limerick about how there are only so many words that actually rhyme with “pencil” (from Kathy Rogers)

ChatGPT:

"Pencil," a word we oft rhyme,

Yet choices are limited, no time.

Stenciled, essentials,

Potential, credentials,

Options are scarce, yet sublime.

Jay:

A brooding baboon with a pencil,

Could trace, with his tail, a stencil.

He found it intriguing

That he was a Being

Both prehensile and existential.

Our Guest

Jay Newton

Your Hosts

Johnny Gamber
Pencil Revolution
@pencilution

Andy Welfle
Woodclinched
@awelfle

Tim Wasem
@TimWasem