Saturday, November 17, 2007
In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking-they were both walking-north.
She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and north.
Until at nightfall [...]
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Sunday, February 18, 2007
Alan Dugan’s off-putting rhythm and his messianic carpentry metaphor makes love a labor of suffering and still finds room for a partner. I enjoy the way he manages to build a love poem out of his self-obsession and his undirected fury… even though I don’t experience love that way, I recognize the power of the [...]
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Friday, February 16, 2007
Carla Bruni went from heiress to model to singer/songwriter. Her new release shows she has the wisdom to copy her betters rather than write poor facsimiles. She sets poems by Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, Dorothy Parker, Walter de la Mare, W.H. Auden, and Christina Rossetti to music. Listen. (via)
“Promises Like Pie-Crust”
by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Promise [...]
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Zadie Smith indicts herself for the failure that characterizes almost all writing:
Bad writing does nothing, changes nothing, educates no emotions, rewires no inner circuitry - we close its covers with the same metaphysical confidence in the universality of our own interface as we did when we opened it. But great writing - great writing forces [...]
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It’s probably obvious to most people, but the complete works of Shakespeare are available online. I just discovered this, and am currently reading The Tempest. Some of my favorite Shakespeare lines appear in that play:
PROSPERO
Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to [...]
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006
People don’t write manifestos like they used to… Whatever happened to the Surrealist Manifesto? How about the the Italian Futurist Manifesto (and its many spinoffs)? There’s also First and Second OuLiPo Manifestos, Humanist (I, II, & III) as well as Post-Humanist Manifestos, not to mention Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto: “…an ironic political myth [...]
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
W.H. Auden, “September 1, 1939″
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From Henry Reed’s Lessons of The War:
I. Naming of Parts
To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.
This is the lower sling [...]
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