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 :-)
>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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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").
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gift link:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/12/books/kay-rya...
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 :-)
What’s a gift link?
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thankyou
>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.
Aaaagh nooo, why have you converted this lovely poem into a feeble fable about a "winning mindset"?
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
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...
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.
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.
Why this poem in particular?
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.
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.
1 reply →
A gift link was posted in this thread
> It is not about the particular poem.
The particular poem itself is also quite nice.
Some things are best left to a youtube production team.
Because it's turtles all the way down.
Somewhere Beyond the Last Visible Dog .. https://delphine-angua.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-last-visible...
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.
No good reason! I'm genuinely curious.
2 replies →
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").
"shell-y skylark" was brilliant (:
Patience, the sport of truly chastened things
https://archive.md/MeXgh
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That’s why I like poems that adhere to a specific structure.
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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.
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.
2 replies →
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.
This is a long-settled HN practice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
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> 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
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.
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