Friday Links
August 14, 2026
Many Must Have It by Ryan Wilson
The Perfect Mirror
Manifesto! A Podcast
The Honest Broker on An Uncanny Moment for Jazz Lovers
Many Must Have It by Ryan Wilson
A mic-drop turn here in this new sonnet from Ryan Wilson.
Alert, in darkness, all my senses taut,
Each creak a thief’s soft footfall on the stair,
Locked doors and windows suddenly are not:
A killer’s in my clothes draped on the chair.
Read the rest HERE.
The Perfect Mirror
Matthew Milliner writes about how he broke AI and how AI almost broke him:
I had been generally opposed to AI. It remains murder for education, and its images make me sick. But it’s always improving, they tell us. What’s more, I am enrolling in a faculty seminar to explore it further, and a few friends have reported positive results. Admittedly, a friend who talks to it as much as he talks to his wife is making me nervous, and it was troubling to hear another friend who said his AI chatbot had led him to spiritual counsel that approximated “the new New Testament.”
Manifesto! A Podcast
I think pretty much every episode of this podcast is excellent, but I especially loved this one because it helped me think of a particular poem in a whole new way. In this episode, “Jake and Phil discuss Philip Roth's 1961 essay "Writing American Fiction" and the Qohelet, also known as the Book of Ecclesiastes.”
The Honest Broker on An Uncanny Moment for Jazz Lovers
Today feels like the end of an era for jazz fans. Something has changed—that’s the pervasive mood right now. And things will never be like they were before.
Yesterday, saxophonist Sonny Rollins died at age 95. And today is the centenary of Miles Davis’s birth (back in Alton, Illinois on May 26, 1926). The juxtaposition of those two events is unsettling.
