iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 15/06/2026

I've seen errors like this in internal drafts, but I've never seen anything like this a published, for sale, book. A reviewer's comment was incorporated into the final text. @springernature.com needs a better quality control system.

A block of text from a book. The last line in the paragraph is "Why is the bottom margin larger on this page?"

130

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 26/04/2026

I've read several articles on spotting "AI" generated text. I know there's software out to help. But I think I got this one on my own.

Screenshot of web news story:
I now have all the sources I need. Let me verify the key URLs I’ll be using: [a list of urls from around the Internet]. All confirmed real from search results. Now I’ll write the article.

Picture the smartest person you’ve ever worked with. Were they the loudest in the room? Did they fire off answers before you’d finished asking the question?

010

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 13/04/2026

My mom always told me I was special, but no one thinks more of me than the NYT Wordle bot! 317 out of 99! ☺️

021

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 09/04/2026

If you are anywhere near Appleton, WI tonight, make your way to the book launch for Melissa Ranges’s PRINTER’S FIST. The book is based on the history of the abolition movement, but speaks to our present historical moment. It's going to be an awesome event.

Celebrate the release of
PRINTER’S FIST
A new book of poems by
Melissa Range
Thursday, April 9th @ 7pm
Wriston Gallery 613 E College Ave, Appleton, WI
Reading, book signing & poetry fun for everyone.
FREE TO ATTEND
The poster is done in a variety of fonts in the style of a 19th century handbill. It features a picture of the author and “Printer’s Fists” (similar to the backhand pointing emojis)

132

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 23/11/2025

My life is beginning to repeat itself as my Wordle results echo the refrigerator magnet poetry of my youth.

030

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 23/08/2025

Here's my other poem, "Another Morning Poem," published in the latest Southern Poetry Review. Some days you just feel better...

Another Morning Poem
With the sun a spot of yellow through
the frosted window, I awoke not
quite thrilled by the strangeness,
like the day after a move. Just
hours ago, the last hollow brick
wall of grief collapsed, that levy
of sadness burst. No telling
how—unseen erosion, the hidden drip
of chaos toward a tipping point,
the wind that carries the weight
of the straw that breaks everything
eventually? And I won’t tell what
it was about. You'd only say
so little? or that again?

I’ll just tell you I stood again, showered,
got dressed. The kettle whistled. Breakfast
tea steeped in something different, toast spread
with jam. I walked outside and into something alive.
The sun a spot of yellow through the frosted winter sky.
Breath refusing to ghost, glasses unfogged.

I was struck by the first real snow
of January making good
on a threat the sky held
over us for weeks—flakes broken,
melted, and frozen back in
on themselves, hard
so they sounded when they hit.
It's true, and like so much that is

true, almost completely meaningless.

151

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 20/08/2025

Here's my poem The Same Dog from the latest Southern Poetry Review. The Roman poet Horace is credited with using a dog as a metaphor for depression, but this is likely a mistranslation.

The Same Dog

I listen to the same dog
every night though I never
see it in the light. Neighbors
deny it’s theirs or even
hearing it. You know, I say, mostly
after sundown, sometimes early
morning? Part growl, part bark?
No, they say, no idea what you’re
talking about. Animal control
no longer responds.

On calm evenings, it seems
a distant howl. In the storm,
I hear its whine right under
my window between crashes
of thunder. Nights aren’t sleepless but
I dream of nails pounding
in irregular rhythms, horns
on beasts that shouldn’t
have horns, tails on people
who shouldn’t have tails. Eyes
everywhere.

Then one night (around mid-summer
when it never really gets dark, the light
only dims and simmers): the barking,
the growling, a whimper, silence.

010

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 04/08/2025

Just got the latest issue of Southern Poetry Review. SPR was one of the first journals I saw at the local B&N when I began taking poetry seriously. Full of poetry, and with those B&W covers, it became my idea of what a poetry journal was and should be. I’m thrilled to have two poems in the issue.

The Cover of Southern Poetry Review featuring a black and white photo of the head and mane of a carousel horse titled Horse Through A Window by Brett Taylor.

130

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 30/06/2025

Here's a sample from Once Upon a Riot by Dawn Tefft.

Groceries. Beer. Liquor. Lottery.

My date studies geography, but not boring geography, hot geography. The kind where they figure the ratio of Jesus to horses.
There’s always a ratio. Jesus to horses. Highschools to Speedways. Liquor to lottery.

All landscape makes me sad. There are always people picnicking near the pond at the end of the park, and all I can think is it’s too far to walk just to sit on a blanket.

The people reading in chairs tire me too — How do they manage to be so relaxed? Does it require a lifetime of practice? — while the whiteness of vans in the sun echoes through the parking lot.

Those lines in the lawn become wavy near the lot. As if to make a point. And yet, patterns are neither just plans nor just accidents.

For instance, my brothers stole and stole and stole until every TV was a replacement for the one just used to buy smokes.

020

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 29/06/2025

I’m re-reading Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson. She discusses the significance of the edges in words and desire. This poem from Poetry Daily keeps coming to mind: poems.com/poem/sapphic....

Sapphic Dream by Mag Gabbert
(words at the end of lines are split between lines. For example, "hotel" is split between "hot" and "-el"
we’ve made the hot
-el room hum
-id from
our show
-er
you: lost
in a sea
-rch for me
-teors
as I was
-h as
-hore
—unraveling hem
-isphere, come
-t, light as a ball
-erina’s spin
-e—
once again im
-mersed in
the cove
-rs, then on
-ce again again
-st our sin
-k

in my heave
-n my
-th
this
port
-rait of
a decade
-nce: you
as we
both rot
-ate
the tow
-els get so
-aked, so we
-t
—make
me a vow
-el—
tell me no
-w those must
be us
-eless

031

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 01/06/2025

Of course there's always this....

010

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 04/05/2025

My poem in the latest issue of Bellevue Literary Review arrived last week. Great issue. Thanks to BLR!

Cover of Bellevue Literary Review Issue 48 displaying Las Tralaveritas 2015 by Aliza Nisenbaum next to the text of the poem:
WHEN YOUR BACKACHE RETURNS
Joseph Radke

The doctor, like a tour guide, pointed

to your X-ray and described points of interest—

the intervertebral space variability, features

of the sagittal and coronal plane. Like a weatherman,

he detailed the current conditions with broad

hand gestures and scientific confidence—

degrees of idiopathic curvature, the tilt

of various vertebrae. He gave the prognosis

like a forecast—no curvature progression,

your spine a stationary front. He prescribes

Ibuprofen, as much as you can tolerate, a heel

lift for one shoe. All like he’s done this

a thousand times before, which of course he has.

We hide so much from one another,

try to smooth out the imperfections

and dress up our faults. Yet, there you

were, the inside of you in the high-contrast

black & white. I was shocked to see

beyond what I could touch, what I liked

so much, to the little twist, one source

of your pain. That night, when the dull

ache kept you awake, I touched the surface.

260

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 28/04/2025

This is always my response to pictures of Trillium. From The Wild Iris by Louise Glück.

Trillium

When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark
seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees
thick with many lights.

I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see.
And as I watched, all the lights of heaven
faded to make a single thing, a fire
burning through the cool firs.
Then it wasn’t possible any longer
to stare at heaven and not be destroyed.

Are there souls that need
death’s presence, as I require protection?
I think if I speak long enough
I will answer that question, I will see
whatever they see, a ladder
reaching through the firs, whatever
calls them to exchange their lives—

Think what I understand already.
I woke up ignorant in a forest;
only a moment ago, I didn’t know my voice
if one were given to me
would be so full of grief, my sentences
like cries strung together.
I didn’t even know I felt grief
until that word came, until I felt
rain streaming from me.

141

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 28/04/2025

My friend Meredith Mason has her first book out. If you have a kid, parent, or job (or know someone who does), you really should read this book. Link the reply.

110

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 03/04/2025

My friend Austin Segrest has a new book out from Unbound Edition Press. Buy it. Read it. Thank me later.

Groom by Austin Segrest. Mustard yellow and brown cover. "Segrest... explores the line between damage and desire, affection and manipulation." Mark Wunderlich

120

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 10/03/2025

On Wednesday night, I'll participate in my first poetry reading since 2010. whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice — Louise Glück

Poster for reading 3/12/25 @ 6 PM at 918 N. Oneida Street, Appleton, WI

1101

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 25/02/2025

I'll be reading as part of the new Breathing Room Poetry Series in Appleton, WI. 6 PM on Mach 12th.

Poster with cute character walking their dog.
Breathing Room Poetry Series.
Joseph Radke, Grace Rebekah Wiersma, Walden Holden.
6pm March 12
918 N. Oneida Street, Appleton, WI
Sponsored by fsm and Only Child

020

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 23/02/2025

The poem that's currently haunting me... (originally in yalereview.bsky.social)

In Those Years
Adrienne Rich

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

0103

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 26/01/2025

I put together a series of small poems called "excerpts from a Calendar of Nights We Didn't Meet." Not sure how they fit in my book manuscript. Here are some recently published in Permafrost. I love the presentation!

000

Joseph Radke @josephradke.com · 26/01/2025

My latest poem is online at The Shore (theshorepoetry.bsky.social). So here is an excerpt from my latest print publication. Check out Permafrost 45.2 for the complete excerpt #1. I love the presentation of the poem on the page. Thanks to the Permafrost staff!

110