AI-Generated Poetry: A Literary Curiosity That's Here to Stay

by Lane Chasek

In our latest issue of Jokes Review we published “A Howl” by CarloMarxBot. This tour de Twitter is a brilliant pastiche of Ginsberg and, unlike most poems, was written by an AI. 

Though CarloMarxBot is the first AI to be published in Jokes (at least that we know of), AI-generated poetry is far from rare in the futuristic age of 2021. Today there exist dozens of online text generators and algorithms which can create poems. Below are just a few of them and the work they’ve produced.

This poetry generator developed by artist/scientist/software designer Zack Scholl created a poem that got published in the literary journal The Archive at Duke University. Scholl submitted his AI poetry to The Archive without telling the editors they were AI-generated, a kind of poetic Turing Test. (He goes into more detail about designing and testing his generator.)

Here’s the first poem Scholl’s program generated for me:

From What are Veins Galloped

A mechanical projection pities
even the vertical
grammatic land in language
to which the metaphor
will not be dedicated. The indespensable dignity of the shoreline!
And you stole in the animosity and flew a shattering imbroglio.
I am cracked by flint and bloodied steel, by clandenstine and rain.

An aquatic wind of phemonanas.
And the kiss to its foliage
and among the silvery lakes the slender one
the lady covered with free time.
Realized esoteric fragrance of strawberry the reasons for my respect
are set in my nose of cork.

Pacifying from smothered wooden.
Only promise, just the
phemonana, nothing but
it.
Candle.

With its clenched expand there are no utensils but rambunctious cycles of momentum and burnt umber
sea water of rosy lonely ash.

I’m sure this is trying to say something. I’m just not sure what.

If you switch the generator to “mushy poem” mode, you’ll get poems which are much shorter and less likely to contain strings of nonsense. The first poem I got using “mushy” mode was surprisingly good: 

Time With The Film 

Our new alcove, our angellic affection tetrahedrons.
As if to wake or enrich or chirp.

I could see this in a lit mag, cooked up by an actual human brain. The word choice is just as eccentric as in the previous one, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome. 

The Bored Humans poetry generator has a much different style. Here’s one example: 

Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby

My mother said to me,
“Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby
(I'm Miss American Dream after all)
I just envy you baby
You've got so much to do
(I'm Miss bad media karma)
Even though I'm telling you the truth
You said it out loud
(I'm bad mouth and all that?)
I've had a lot in my mouth
You better keep it close to the top
Don't know which movie you're into
Lose your secrets
Gotta be real with you
You gotta be real with me
Yeah, when I'm with you”

This one seems blues-inspired, maybe with a touch of 80s-era dad rock. This isn’t coincidental. Eric Borgos, the algorithm’s creator, trained it using song lyrics from artists such as Bruce Springsteen. Could it pass the Turing Test? It’s hard to say. You’d either have to be an AI or else a human with a lot of chutzpah to repeat “baby” twenty times in a single poem. 

This last one required a bit of Internet archaeology to unearth. Charles O. Hartman wrote his prose poem “Seventy-Six Assertions and Sixty-Three Questions” way back in 1994 and published it on The Grist Online in 1995. Hartman describes it as a “computer-assisted poem.” He goes on to describe the process behind its creation:

The rough draft of this poem, approximately ten times the final size of the text, was produced by my program PROSE (written in Borland C), which is essentially a finite-state automaton or context-free grammar language generator…All further editing was done by hand, with the strict rule that I could only delete (sentences, clauses, phrases, words), not add.

It’s a longer read, but I recommend checking it out. Hartman’s work is interesting because it shows how AI-generated poetry isn’t a recent trend. People have been using algorithms to create literature for more than twenty years, and the fact that a poem like this was created almost 30 years ago feels like discovering an Xbox controller beneath the ashes of Pompeii. 

Can AI-generated poetry be awkward at times? Of course, but you could say the same about human-generated poetry, too. Whether or not AI poetry can pass a Turing Test is pointless, since most readers (unless they’re very anti-technology) won’t care if a poem they enjoy was written by a human, an AI, or a human and AI working in tandem. We’re far from “AI T.S. Eliot enslaves editorial staff at Paris Review” levels of technological development, but in its current state, AI technology functions well as a toy/tool for curious writers.

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Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.

Can NFTs Help Fund Literary Journals?

by Peter Clarke

Literary journals, sadly, are not instant money-makers. No one gets rich off publishing niche literary content. The only failsafe way to pull in cash is to charge for submissions. But—and no one talks about this enough—this approach is essentially a scam from the perspective of writers.

Aside from changing the culture so people regularly buy literary journals in place of their Netflix subscription, isn’t there some other way to fund literary journals?

There are bake sales, I suppose. And car washes. Also, there’s this new thing: selling NFTs.

The literary world is cautiously figuring out how to participate in the NFT boom. For example, according to The Debrief, some authors are now publishing their books as NFTs. One author, for example, sold an NFT book that he hadn’t been able to get published for 5 ETH (which currently has a value of $15K). Not bad!

It remains to be seen whether NFTs will have a lasting impact on the literary space. With a quick glance at an NFT marketplaces, you can find some books out there—but they don’t exactly seem to be hot commodities. We don’t seem to have a Beeple of books yet, let alone a thriving market for NFT literature.

But still! It’s a fascinating idea: selling literature as tokens. Also, it would be beneficial to the literary ecosystem if literary journals could fund their operations by selling NFTs. Journals don’t just publish stories and poems, after all; they also create a ton of peripheral content. Jokes Review, for example, publishes around 20 works of literature in each issue, and for each work we create an original piece of art. Why not create NFTs based on that artwork?

In fact, we’re giving this a try. Our very first NFT, based on the artwork we created for an essay published in our Summer 2021 issue, is now available on Rarible:

If you happen to know someone who has some Ethereum to throw around, this little beautify is up for grabs for 0.05 ETH.

Hopefully this will be a success! If so, we could essentially fund our entire operations by selling one or two NFTs per issue. This wouldn’t only be great news for us, but would bode well for other literary ventures that seek consistent monetization beyond charging submission fees.

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Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.

Chapbook Review: I Have Been Warned Not to Write About This by Ron Riekki

by Lane Chasek

Past Jokes Review contributor Ron Riekki published a chapbook through Grandma Moses Press back in May. The book, I Have Been Warned Not to Write About This, features poems about wildfires, climate change, ex-addict family members, working at Domino’s, as well as one about an army bunkmate who claims to have been abducted by aliens.

Each poem delivers a swift, visceral punch to the reader’s gut. Riekki has always had a gift for depicting the frailty of the human condition, and here he showcases human frailty alongside the frailty of planet Earth itself. Each stanza promises an ending, a calamity—something at the edge of our vision that threatens to undo us but never makes itself fully visible. The end is inevitable, but its distance is comforting.

Since this is a Grandma Moses Press chapbook, this book is not only a pleasure to read, but a novel addition to a home library. The press’s 3 ⅜” x 5” limited-run chapbooks can be hidden anywhere—day planners, billfolds, purses, instruction manuals, and even inside other chapbooks. It pays to be discreet, especially when it comes to poetry.

Check out Riekki’s poetry in Jokes Review:

My Sister Said She Saw a UFO: 3 Poems

The Road Not Taken: 2 Poems

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Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.

J.P. Donleavy: America Destroys Writers

by Peter Clarke

I recently picked up a used copy of “A Fairy Tale of New York,” the 1973 novel by Irish-American novelist J.P. Donleavy. When I opened the cover, an old newspaper clipping fell out. I unfolded the clipping to find this article: J.P. Donleavy’s Manor Life by Connie Fletcher.

Beyond detailing Donleavy’s shockingly uneventful home life, the article features the following sections, where Donleavy explains why he feels America destroys writers and also why the Irish Finance Act of 1969 compelled him to move permanently to Ireland.

From J.P. Donleavy’s Manor Life, or How America Destroys Writers

Donleavy is a self-made Irishman. He enjoys what Ireland can do for writers.

“America destroys writers,” he says. “In Europe, a writer is regarded as a writer for all his days. In America, you’re always up at bat. Americans don’t know you’re there unless you’re glad-facing on the television. The whole attitude in America is, what have you done lately?”

…

Donleavy didn’t settle permanently in Ireland until 1969, when the new tax laws allowed authors and artists to live here tax-free. Before that, he lived in London. He wrote “The Ginger Man” on a budget of $11 a week, largely at his parents’ home in the Bronx.

…

Donleavy separates himself from other “returning Irish.” “Most of the returning Irish do have pretensions of grandeur of some sort. It is a tradition in Ireland that Irishmen who have made a lot of money in England or America or Australia will return home and buy up all the big country houses. That’s their dream and they do it.”

Donleavy’s being in Ireland, he claims, has everything to do with the Irish Finance Act of 1969, which exempts authors and artists from paying taxes on money received from their works. He moved to Ireland from London “practically immediately” and became an Irish citizen after the finance act became law.

“Having tax-free status is as good as winning the Nobel Prize.” Says Donleavy. He has no other source of income besides his writing, he says.

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Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.

Sloppy Jane's Accidental Literary Moment

by Peter Clarke

The internet is flooded with unintentional works of literature. From tweets to memes to corporate ad copy, every piece of online writing possesses at least some small amount of literary value. Occasionally, you stumble upon a piece of random internet content that’s so good you almost want to print it out and put it on your bookshelf.

At one point, I collected a folder of unexpected works of literature—a sort of literary “found art” collection. One of my favorite pieces in the collection is this GoFundMe post by Haley Dahl, the lead singer of the band Sloppy Jane. The post is from a few years ago and, as of this writing, is still up on GoFundMe. So, the post still serves a practical, functional purpose. But aside from that, it’s possible to look at this post purely as a work of literature. And as a work of literature, it’s pretty great:

I WILL EAT MY FAVORITE SUIT FOR 20K

Howdy

I'm Haley Dahl, bandleader of NY/LA band "Sloppy Jane".

In the fall of 2017, I was heartbroken- over not one particular occurrence, but over everything at once. I struggled with expressing this, because it felt really typically girly to cry about my feelings in a way that I couldn't consolidate with my perception of myself.

One morning, I was having an emotional discussion about this heartbreak with an involved party, and I became so overwhelmed with the need to cry in public, but still couldn't really let it loose for these reasons. All of a sudden, I looked up and saw an oversized black suit hanging from an iron gate. I threw down my bags and put it on, and finally, I cried, knowing that I looked like a stylish Operatic Man, rather than a young woman covered in snot, I knew that my tears were the tears of a grown man, which made them uncomfortable to witness. I made a declaration:

"I'm going to wear this suit until it rots off my body."

I wore this suit for one calendar year to the date, every day, without washing it. I wore it to every show we played, I wore it to sleep, I wore it in the 20-some caves I visited while beginning to work on my bands next record (which is being recorded, in a cave).

I had to retire it before it rotted off my body, because a literal medical professional told me I had to stop wearing it for health reasons.

I still have the suit and have been trying to figure out how to properly send it off, and for 20K, I will eat it in it's entirety. (only caveat is I might burn it and eat its ashes).

If I receive 20k, I will post a video of myself eating the suit and the aftermath of eating the suit (still unwashed and partially rotting), in November 2019, following the recording of my cave record, which will be recorded in October.

I love you
Haley Dahl

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Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.

Stupid Lucifer! - Interview with Demon Wrangler

by Peter Clarke

It's like — “if the guy that built Salvation Mountain fronted Iggy & The Stooges.”

Sacramento-based musician Sam Eliot is known for his beautifully-crafted lyrics. He writes lines with the delicacy and insight of Leonard Cohen, the clever irony of Lou Reed. Here’s a typical Sam Eliot line, from his 2012 album, Monte Sereno:

“My love is as strong as the bars on the window
of a 24-hour liquor and lotto,
and I can let people in,
but it all depends on what exactly I’ve got
and what exactly you’re needin’.”

But this all changed with his latest project, a new band called Demon Wrangler.

“Demon Wrangler is not about songwriting at all,” he told me. “The songs are intended to be kind of stupid.”

This new project is such a departure from Sam’s previous work that you have to wonder if it’s a joke. It turns out, it is. But also, it’s not.

To get the full story behind the new band, I interviewed Sam via FaceTime as he walked around downtown Sacramento. The interview is below, lightly edited. But first, take a moment to enjoy Stupid Lucifer!

PETER CLARKE: The songs are all Christian. Is Demon Wrangler making fun of Christian music?

SAM ELIOT: That’s all in the eye of the observer. Even making it, there’s a part of me that’s like, this is fucking hysterical, and then there’s a part of me that is just dead serious about it. … This whole project just started vomiting out of me and I don’t really know what to make of it myself. I don’t know where the humor ends and the seriousness begins.

I grew up really religious, and it feels like a way to explore my own roots. … Outside of any Christian boundaries, the underlying thing behind a lot of the songs is a hyper contrast of forces—and championing the forces of light rather than the forces of dark.  

What initially inspired it? Did it start as a song that grew into album? And was it a joke that then became more serious? Or the other way around?

I was at the studio working on a song for one of my solo records. I had Mike Farrell in there laying down some guitar on it. And he had to go to rehearse with his other band, Th’ Losin Streaks, so he left. I was starting to break everything down and pack up to go home. But we had gotten this really great guitar sound. So I was like, I’m going to spend the next hour trying to make a song really fast. Just as an exercise. And I did that. I just laid down this crazy-ass drum beat, laid down this crazy-ass guitar, and then I grabbed the vocal mic and pressed play. I didn’t have anything written. I just started screaming into the mic, like, nonsense. And that was Stupid Lucifer. I recorded Stupid Lucifer in twenty minutes—from top to bottom and mixed it.

I remembered I finished it and was like, “What is this? What the fuck is this?” And as I was sitting there, everything just started clicking in my head. And I was just like, it’s as if Iggy Pop got really into Jesus but still did heroin. It’s this whole clashing thing. Like, people that are religious are going to hate this. And people that aren’t religious are going to hate this. And I was just like, “This is the best thing I’ve ever made.”

For three days after that, I couldn’t sleep. I was having this manic awakening. I just started getting force fed everything I needed to do for this Demon Wrangler thing. I went into the studio the next day and recorded two more songs just like that. 

It’s like the David Lynch thing: Creativity can be like fishing and you’re going for these big fish. And every once in a while you land a fish and you’re like, fuck, what kind of fish is this? It came out of you but it’s almost alien to you at the same time. That’s how the Demon Wrangler thing felt initially, where I’m getting a serious download from the universe.   

So you played all the instruments and everything?

Yeah.

It’s funny because it doesn’t sound at all like you, but then again it’s like, this is definitely Sam. You haven’t tapped into this before, but it’s purely you.

It feels like I tapped into a deep unconscious part of the mind. And deep down you’re afraid of God; you’re afraid that all these wackado Christians are actually right and there are cosmic forces at play. And I believe that to a certain extent.

It’s definitely not a goof on people of faith of any kind. That’s definitely not my intention. More than anything my intention is to talk about taboo things. In our culture, religion is not fuckin’ Thanksgiving dinner conversation. It’s weird that at this point in history, you can talk about your pussy anywhere, but, dude, the punk rock boundary is talking about religion and faith and spirituality. … And religion undergirds our entire social fabric, so it’s like, gotta talk about this shit in a way that’s honest.

Your music has always done the Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan thing where you reference the Old Testament symbology. And this is almost like your New Testament symbology moment. Is that a fair observation?

I think it’s more explicitly about that… This whole first record, I’m trying to present some kind of cosmology that uses the language of religion in a broad sense but isn’t— I don’t know. I thought about shopping this whole thing as a kind of Christian rock band, but I felt that was kind of disingenuous.

Is Demon Wrangler now a band? Or is it a side project of Sam Eliot?

It’s as much a band as there can be a band in 2020, when you can’t play shows. … It is going to be something I’d like to do as a live band. … And at this point I don’t even know if Sam Eliot is a spinoff of Demon Wrangler. I don’t even know anymore.  

The Demon Wrangler project almost begs for an explanation in the sense that… Your first instinct is to ask: What the fuck is this? Is this a Christian record? Is this a Satanic record? Is this a mistake like someone pulled a Tommy Wiseau? Like they tried to make the most perfect record of all time, but then it was so bad that it’s good? It’s hard to tell. But that’s the beauty of it.

Yeah, in my mind, when this all started hitting me, this was like—if the guy that built Salvation Mountain fronted Iggy & The Stooges. Or like, you know, the worship leader at your Christian megachurch decided to eat a strip of acid two hours before service.

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Follow Demon Wrangler on Spotify and Bandcamp. You can also follow Sam’s other musical ventures, Sam Eliot and Duke Chevalier.

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Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.

Reading About Florida Man: Book Review and Review of the Sunshine State

by Lane Chasek

(Florida Man, Mickey J. Corrigan. Grandma Moses Press, 2020. Las Cruces, New Mexico.)

I recently read Mickey J. Corrigan’s chapbook Florida Man. As the title suggests, these poems are about Florida Man, a meme that blew up in the early 2010s which has since mutated into a symbol of American exceptionalism (if you consider dangerous, antisocial behavior exceptionalism). While reading this book, I also happened to be staying in Florida for a week, giving me a perfect chance to write about the book, the state, and the meme.

The Florida Man meme was born from bizarre news headlines which involve a Florida Man (or Florida Woman) getting arrested, killed, humiliated, or saving the day in bizarre ways. Such headlines include “Florida Man killed by alligators while hiding from cops,” “Florida Man chews off another man’s face,” “Florida Man claims wife was kidnapped by holograms,” and my favorite, “Florida Man catches huge tarpon while fishing from rainbow unicorn floaty.” A good Florida Man headline acts as a one-sentence tall tale, a narrative that satisfies our need for both the mundane and the absurd. We live in a time where Paul Bunyan’s exploits are tired relics of an older generation, the story of John Henry working himself to death reads more like a Marxist fable than a tall tale, and most people under the age of 25 don’t know who Dolemite is. So in place of these classics we’ve created Floridian Gilgamesh. And luckily for us, Mickey J. Corrigan has translated these headlines into poetry.

~

The standout feature of Florida Man is Corrigan’s mimicry of the flat, objective tone of a news article. This lack of affect in Corrigan’s language recreates the clear-cut Associated Press style and contrasts with the surreal subject matter of each poem—which is part of the appeal of the Florida Man meme.

Speaking of subject matter, many of these poems are based on actual Florida Man headlines. “Frozen Food Lands on Roof of Florida Man’s Home,” “Drinking and Driving Florida Man Style,” and “Florida Man Goes on Honeymoon on Stolen Yacht” are all based on real events, and Corrigan succeeds at recreating the funny human-interest stories you’d expect from these headlines.

Of especial interest is “Florida Man Burns Down House Trying to Bake Cookies on George Foreman Grill,” which follows an inebriated, naked Florida Man who almost burns his house down while trying to bake cookies on his puny George Foreman Grill. Despite the absurdity of the situation, this poem’s Florida Man is more than a clown and becomes a mock hero. His efforts to save his home are ineffective as he tries to “dampen the fire/with dry towels” but I can’t help but love the guy’s determination. Florida Man at his best is a “superhero/of bad decisions” who demonstrates the heroism of the absurd, and even if he doesn’t win, he still makes us smile.

~

Corrigan is originally from Boston but currently resides in southern Florida, so chances are Corrigan may have been nearby while I was reading Florida Man. My reading of Florida Man was inextricably bound to my time in Florida, and I’d like to say that I enjoyed Florida the state as much as Florida Man the book and Florida Man the meme, but I have to admit, I didn’t like Florida.

During my stay in Florida I was surprised that I didn’t see a single alligator. Where were they? So many Florida Man stories feature alligators, you’d think I’d find at least one.

I also bought some tomatoes from a fruit stand, and when I cut into them, all the seeds had germinated. They tasted like gravel. I got some oranges from that same fruit stand and they tasted like rice vinegar. I left my fruit for the anoles to eat, but the anoles didn’t seem interested.

~

Of course, there’s more to Florida than alligators, oranges, Disney World, and drunks burning down their houses. There’s a dark side to the Sunshine State, too.

As you read Florida Man you’ll notice that, while the concepts remain ridiculous, the tone becomes much darker. “Florida Man ‘Inspired’ by Wal-Mart Shootings” confronts mental illness and gun violence. “Florida Man Nearly Deported Even Though Born in US” tells a story about racial profiling and corrupt immigration policies. “Florida Mayor Fired, Acting Mayor Fired Too,” while hilarious, is a microcosm for how nepotism and buck-passing fucntions in American politics on both the local and federal levels. And “Florida Man Executes Zombie Attack” is about the infamous Miami Cannibal Attack of 2012. More on that soon.

For Corrigan, Florida Man morphs from absurd hero to villain, a symbol of the societal and political ills of America. In Corrigan’s own words:

            Florida man:
            indestructible
            and coming
            to a nightmare
            near you.

~

I was a junior in high school when the Miami Cannibal Attack occurred. Of course, back then everyone called it the Miami Zombie Attack because it was 2012 and America was obsessed with zombies.

The Internet transformed what should have been a routine (though gruesome) news item into a drug-addled, bloody, carnivalesque version of the truth. A man who was high on bath salts mutilated a homeless man over a (supposedly) missing Bible, which should have been horrific enough. Drug addiction, violence, homelessness, organized religion—this incident was already a modern-day nightmare before the Internet injected zombie mythology into it. I don’t know—even in high school, listening to my classmates jokes about zombie season in Florida felt sick.

O, Florida—what an unreal state you are! 

~

Every non-Floridian in Florida is there for Disney World or one of the thousands of other tourist destinations/mantraps that orbit Orlando, but I was there on family business, and when you’re not in Florida for fun, you start to realize how not-fun Florida is.

The humidity’s unbearable, for starters. The interstate traffic is bumper-to-bumper most of the time, and the local news stations are filled with stories about motorists falling into randomly-ocurring sinkholes. The tap water smells like hardboiled eggs, and every time I stepped out of the shower during my “vacation” I reeked of hot egg salad. And I know that some Floridians will want to stone me for saying this, but I don’t get the hype about Publix. It’s like Safeway, only more humid, and the subs are mediocre at best.

And this is where Florida Man was born—Florida Man in all his glory, goofiness, corrutpion, and wrath. My time in Florida reminded me that geography is integral to literature and the human experience. Just as Huckleberry Finn wouldn’t be Huckleberry Finn without the Mississippi River, and Crime & Punishment wouldn’t be Crime & Punishment without St. Petersburg, the Florida Man meme is inextricably tied to Florida—its backwaters, bayous, amusement parks, WalMarts, interstates, and decaying truck stops. Florida Man the book and Florida Man the meme made more sense to me while in the heart of the American Absurd.

So if you read Florida Man, try to read it in Florida. Don’t worry, the alligators don’t bite. In fact, you probably won’t see any.

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Lane Chasek (@LChasek) is the author of the nonfiction book Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, the poetry/prose collection A Cat is not a Dog, and two forthcoming chapbooks, Dad During Deer Season and this is why I can't have nice things. Lane's current pride and joy is an essay he published in Hobart about Lola Bunny and the latest Space Jam movie.

Old-School Paperbacks Have the Best Cover Art

by Peter Clarke

I’m not sure if this is a popular opinion or not, but to me it seems obvious that old-school paperbacks have the best cover art. And the best design. I could probably write a 10,000-word piece to back up this claim, but I’d rather just show pictures of some of my favorite paperback book covers. And let them make the case for me.

After you’re done ogling these beautiful old-school covers, compare them to The New York Times list: Best Book Covers of 2020. Some recent book covers admittedly are pretty fantastic. But in general, the paperback covers from decades past—preferably slightly grimy and creased on the edges—are far superior, at least in my view.

I will also note that book design is generally an underrated art form. If you haven’t seen it already, I’d recommend checking out Chip Kidd’s 2012 Ted Talk, The Hilarious Art of Book Design. If you like books and have strong feelings about their covers, it’s worth watching.

And now, please enjoy these amazing old-school book covers, taken off my bookshelf and photographed just today, presented here in no particular order.

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Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.