Ever wanted to play a computer game based on the poems of Emily Dickinson? Well, now you can, with the release of EmilyBlaster, a 1980s-style game in which players must shoot words out of the sky to correctly recreate Dickinson's verse. EmilyBlaster is a real-life version of the fictional game that a character makes in Gabrielle Zevin's novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, out next month. Zevin's book is about Sadie and Sam, who first meet as children in a hospital computer room in 1987. Eight years later, they are reunited and begin to work together making computer games.

I tie my Hat -- I crease my Shawl -- Life's little duties do -- precisely -- As the very least Were infinite -- to me -- I put new Blossoms in the Glass -- And throw the old -- away -- I push a petal from my gown That anchored there -- I weigh The time'twill be till six o'clock I have so much to do -- And yet -- Existence -- some way back -- Stopped -- struck -- my ticking -- through -- The enigmatic young lady staring directly into our eyes in the famous daguerreotype pictured above challenges us. What is she thinking, with her slightly pursed lips, small nosegay, and plain dress? Perhaps she is composing another of the nearly 1800 poems she wrote in her lifetime. Perhaps she is thinking of her garden, where she gathered some fresh flowers. Perhaps she is pondering the many things she has to do before six o'clock. The poet Emily Dickinson, pictured above, is, of course, drawing on the "carpe diem" trope in her poem. As Robert Pinsky noted, the poet is well known for her somber, "steely perception" that time runs on.

"I need about one hundred fifty drafts of a poem to get it right, and fifty more to make it sound spontaneous." So said the 1966 U.S. Poet Laureate James Dickey. One could only imagine how Dickey would react today if he had Google's latest AI project Verse by Verse by his side. He could whip out 150 drafts in minutes with 150 mere clicks of a key, and with those 50 additional clicks, sculpt his initial passages into the grandest styles of any of dozens of his literary peers. For all aspiring great poets today--and for all those whose poems simply suck--there is help.