Writer, critic, literary journalist, poetry editor. Trained as language philosopher. Follow at POETRY/POETICS/LANGUAGE/COMMUNITY (https://xitter.gq/t.co/bPAJgjYgsM)
Joined March 2021
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RD Pohl retweeted
UB's prestigious Poetics program is in limbo.
Students and faculty fear the program could be coming to an end, while university officials maintain it is not shutting down.
Read more here: investigativepost.org/2026/1…
RD Pohl retweeted
UB in recent months made moves to gut its famous poetry program -- it's down to just one professor now. Confronted by students and professors, the admin is now defensive:
“If [it’s] the consensus of the department that I blew this one, then I blew it."
investigativepost.org/2026/1…
RD Pohl retweeted
This looks like a failure to engage in long-range strategic planning, a lack of vision for the college, and historical amnesia, with a little self-dealing and corruption thrown on top. I hope UB pulls up out of this death spiral and restores Poetics.
New: University at Buffalo leadership appears to be shuttering its renowned poetry program, which has produced a 2026 Pulitzer winner.
The dean gave the program’s two endowed professors positions to others. It lost its budget. Its director resigned.
investigativepost.org/2026/1…
RD Pohl retweeted
Juliana Spahr to @ipostnews :
RD Pohl retweeted
Programming is now suspended for the fall semester. Just one professor remains to advise some 20 graduate students, who are now protesting the shuttering of the program.
UB isn’t saying much but the dean now says maybe he “blew it.”
investigativepost.org/2026/1…
RD Pohl retweeted
This story was thoroughly reported by two up-and-coming student journalists at The Spectrum, UB’s independent student newspaper. I played advisor/editor. Give it a read:
investigativepost.org/2026/1…
RD Pohl retweeted
New: Leadership questions. Financial pressures. An uncertain future.
UB's renowned poetry program is facing challenges that could shape what's next.
Read more here: investigativepost.org/?p=530…
RD Pohl retweeted
Wikipedia, which went online in January, 2001, is now the greatest compendium of human knowledge ever assembled. Yet in the last four years, it has lost 25 per cent of its traffic—more than a billion monthly visitors. Since the site recruits its editors from its audience, this dip also threatens its growth and quality. Many users have been intercepted by A.I. “It’s a cruelly ironic fate,” Julian Lucas writes. Wikipedia was the single most important training corpus in the history of artificial intelligence. Now artificial intelligence is threatening its survival. Read Lucas’s report on the future of Wikipedia: newyorker.com/books/under-re…
RD Pohl retweeted
One important part of rethinking and redesigning the university.
I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down. nytimes.com/2026/10/18/opini…
RD Pohl retweeted
As a longtime admirer of Dennis Tedlock's work, who was both the McNulty Professor and a founder of the Poetics program at Buffalo, this is rather sad news
RD Pohl retweeted
Powerful and brilliant piece by Arundhati Roy on the dystopia of AI and what it’s already done to human beings. equator.org/articles/arundha…
RD Pohl retweeted
The @UBuffalo College of Arts and Sciences leadership may have been asleep at the wheel for the past few years but it's not too late for the new dean (and new president) to wake up and fix this mess. Just fill the empty Poetics chairs. Not hard, not complicated, not expensive.
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RD Pohl retweeted
For the Poetry Foundation— “Breathing At the End on the World” — on Auden, Aalto, and a visit to Helsinki in the Dog Days
poetryfoundation.org/article…
RD Pohl retweeted
OK I'll break my posting fast for Anne Carson: nytimes.com/2026/10/08/books…
RD Pohl retweeted
“I write to find out what I think about something.” —Anne Carson
buff.ly/c0q6qt9
RD Pohl retweeted
From a Wittgensteinian perspective the AI consciousness debate is a philosophical nadir for culture. Virtually everything said about AI consciousness represents what Wittgenstein called the metaphysical use of language: words acting like an idling engine, doing no real work. 1/11
RD Pohl retweeted
“There's a perception of mobster behavior” from leading AI companies, one mathematician tells WIRED as OpenAI prepares to release more than 100 new solutions to unsolved problems. buff.ly/Cgi7mCg
RD Pohl retweeted
SCOOP: In August, OpenAI convened around 40 mathematicians to discuss what to do if AI outpaces human capabilities in the field. The company hinted that its powerful models had solved hundreds of longstanding math problems, say people who were in attendance. wired.com/story/openai-is-pi…
