97 points by mrholme 1 day ago | 17 comments
js2 1 day ago
mcphage 20 hours ago
This works a lot better than the archive link—they have the same text, but the archive link loses all of the JS, and so the page doesn’t make a lot of sense. Here you see it interactive, and—it’s a fun way to read a poem :-)
m3kw9 12 hours ago
What’s a gift link?
zem 6 hours ago
a link shared by a subscriber that lets nonsubscribers access an otherwise paywalled article
b0a04gl 22 hours ago
thankyou
b0a04gl 22 hours ago
>She lives below luck-level, never imagining some lottery will change her load of pottery to wings.

nails the mindset where imagining change doesn’t even happen. it’s not about failing to win. it’s about never thinking you’re in the draw. that kind of mental floor sits deep.

dash2 13 hours ago
Aaaagh nooo, why have you converted this lovely poem into a feeble fable about a "winning mindset"?
b0a04gl 4 hours ago
maybe my bad, but that's what i can infer at 0th minute after reading it. throw some light if I missed the whole point
jihadjihad 16 hours ago
Poem itself is from 1994. If you'd like to read the text by itself, you can do so here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50611/turtle-56d22dd3...

Noelia- 5 hours ago
At first I thought the page was frozen, but then I realized it was designed to make you read one line at a time. It felt a bit awkward at first, but after a while the rhythm started to feel right.

You don’t see many websites that ask you to slow down, but for a poem like this, it actually works. It’s not something that grabs you instantly, but if you give it a few quiet minutes, it kind of gets under your skin.

dash2 13 hours ago
Here is another poem about a weak, slow creature:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57076/the-armadillo

There is a hint of war in there.

tptacek 1 day ago
Why this poem in particular?
mrholme 1 day ago
It is not about the particular poem.. It was about the innovative ux aporoach of showing the poem stanza in context of the review.. but unfortunately the archive link strips this javascript feature. Try opening the page in private or alternate browser and If you are able to bypass the paywall, you can enjoy it.
b0a04gl 22 hours ago
yeah i got what it was going for eventually, but tbh it was annoying at first. the scroll interaction wasn’t clear and it broke the reading flow. felt more like a bug than a feature until i slowed down and figured it out. the context jumps were jarring too. didn’t really help with continuity.
goldfeld 14 hours ago
> until i slowed down

Maybe the poem has a message

IncreasePosts 14 hours ago
A gift link was posted in this thread
mcphage 20 hours ago
> It is not about the particular poem.

The particular poem itself is also quite nice.

p3rls 19 hours ago
Some things are best left to a youtube production team.
pvg 1 day ago
Because it's turtles all the way down.
defrost 1 day ago
js2 1 day ago
Why not?

> Because even as this poem is about what it’s like to be a turtle, it’s also about what it’s like for a turtle to be a metaphor. And — you could say therefore — about how looking at (or as) a turtle illuminates what it’s like to be a person, a woman, a poet.

tptacek 1 day ago
No good reason! I'm genuinely curious.
goldfeld 14 hours ago
I think maybe the reason is more arbitrary, as here look at this 90s author's symbolism, it's not just the old classics that are readable in-depth; contemporary style etc
js2 17 hours ago
I thought it was answered by the article and the line I quoted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
svat 13 hours ago
The "More from A.O. Scott" at the bottom of the article links to:

• "Life Isn’t Perfect. But This Poem Might Be." March 21, 2025 (“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” by Adrienne Rich, 1951) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/21/books/adrienn...

• "I Would Follow This Poem to Hell and Back" Feb. 21, 2025 (“my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell,” from SELECTED POEMS, copyright ©1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/21/books/gwendol...

• "I Swear This Poem Didn’t Make Me Cry" Jan. 23, 2025 (“From a Photograph,” from NEW COLLECTED POEMS, copyright ©1962 by George Oppen) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/24/books/george-...

• "Will You Fall in Love With This Poem? I Did." Dec. 18, 2024 (“Romantic Poet,” by Diane Seuss, 2024) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/18/books/romanti...

• "A Poem About Waiting, and Wishing You Had a Drink" Nov. 1, 2024 (“Party Politics,” from “The Complete Poems,” by Philip Larkin. originally 1984?) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/01/books/philip-...

• "A Poem That’s Like a Perfect First Date" April 11, 2024 (“Having a Coke With You,” by Frank O’Hara, copyright © 1971) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/11/books/frank-o...

So it appears that this one is part of a series (previously called "Close Read" as in the last link above: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/arts/close-read.htm...): every few weeks / months, A. O. Scott writes about some poem he's liked, in this format (all of them say "Produced by Aliza Aufrichtig, Alicia DeSantis, Nick Donofrio and Emily Eakin").

13 hours ago
zem 6 hours ago
"shell-y skylark" was brilliant (:
darepublic 21 hours ago
Patience, the sport of truly chastened things
1 day ago
neonate 1 day ago
1 day ago
tiktokcoins100 1 day ago
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tiktokcoins100 1 day ago
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troupo 21 hours ago
[flagged]
spiderfarmer 21 hours ago
That’s why I like poems that adhere to a specific structure.
21 hours ago
absurdo 1 day ago
[flagged]
mrholme 1 day ago
Not an affiliate, nor a fan of nytimes.. Not sure why the title was changed and the context removed from the submission. I was highlighting an interesting ux where the review of the poem appears in context to the verses. And I could skip login in my private window in brave.
tomhow 1 day ago
You seem to be a new contributor to HN, so, welcome!

It's our policy and well-established convention here that we use the same title as the original article, with the only exception being if the original title is misleading or baity, in which case we'll try and lift an appropriate phrase from the article (including the URL, or a subtitle, or a photo caption).

A title that editorializes or makes a meta-commentary about the article is against that policy.

It's nothing personal! We make these changes to titles every day, and over the years we've found it serves our purposes very well.

evertedsphere 1 day ago
also, you can leave a comment on your own post highlighting what you found interesting about the link
mrholme 1 day ago
Thanks..my bad for not going through the rules on titles..
1 day ago
tomhow 1 day ago
We know it's an imperfect solution but it's the least-worst solution. We'd lose far more than we'd gain if we banned all paywalled content, as it's such a huge share of the total body of content (esp. when weighted by masthead prominence and traffic) on the web. But it's also a policy that it doesn't belong on HN if there's no easy way around the paywall. We don't want to list anything that's not freely accessible for everyone, reasonably easily.
pvg 1 day ago
This is a long-settled HN practice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
1 day ago
tetris11 1 day ago
[flagged]
dctoedt 21 hours ago
> NYtimes are testing their new AI's summarization capabilities?

It's attributed to A.O. Scott, who's been around for awhile.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/a-o-scott

idiotsecant 19 hours ago
The text of the story does seem AI-ish, but I think the idea is that this story has a somewhat unique presentation. I don't understand why it's on HN frontpage, exactly, but it is pretty innovative for the NY Times.
19 hours ago
_ink_ 1 day ago
[flagged]
1 day ago