[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell

There are many "better" poets than Shakespeare. ...

... if we're playing that game (and it truly IS a game)...let's actually play it.

I would take Larkin's poems over anyone's, including Shakespeare's (though not over the poetry in Shakespeare's plays).

Larkin's "Aubade" (the best of many strong poems) captures the terror of death--a basic feature of life for many of us--more strongly than any other piece of writing I know. Shakespeare's sonnet 73, lovely as it is, can't hold a candle to it.

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Thanks, Christine, for that thought-provoking list, including

Originally Posted by Christine P'legion

- the first computers in the 1950s; ... generative AI in the early 2020s

Maybe in a generation, people will start such a list with: X years from the creation of generative AI to the first AI-written masterpiece.

I hope others will add to the list or otherwise share thoughts.