Wednesday, June 30, 2021
For you it may be …
… a lot of others may just want to see it for themselves and make up their own minds, without being preemptively nagged about it.
Commentary: 'The Music Man' is the wrong Broadway revival for this crucial moment.
The problem arises when this fantasy is mounted as an upbeat, tidy time capsule, allowing audiences to ogle a version of America that never existed. Ultimately, "The Music Man" sets forth a sanitized, insular and very white America — a vision regularly exploited by a recent president (who gained a following with scare tactics and sold a "think system" of his own) to stoke racial fears and pit Americans against one another. It asks audiences to cheer for yet another romanticized fraud.
I don’t think the problem arises for most people, who understand that it is fiction, a romance, not a sociopolitical tract.
He's certainly a candidate …
… Is Poe the most influential American writer? A new book offers evidence. - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In “The Reason for the Darkness of the Night” (available June 15), Tresch emphasizes how much Poe infuses scientific discourse into his most fantastical imaginings. For example, in “A Descent Into the Maelstrom,” a sailor, whose boat has been sucked into a gigantic whirlpool, rather improbably saves himself by thinking like a physicist: He observes that cylindrical objects fell more slowly into the whirling vortex than other objects of the same size, so he quickly lashes himself to a barrel to escape from a watery grave.
A classic poem for our time…
… Siren Song of the Idle Life - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tennyson uses the episode as a kind of metaphor for complete resignation: the feeling that maybe it’s better to surrender, disengage from the world and its troubles, and live mainly for rest and mindless pleasure.
An interesting development …
… National Endowment for the Arts Announces New Report on Artists’ Use of Technology as a Creative Medium.
A key finding of the report is that even with the willingness of audiences to move to digital spaces for arts and cultural programming during the pandemic, many cultural organizations lack capacity and the resources to adequately support the growing needs of tech-centered artists and their audiences. At the same time, these artists have demonstrated their unique ability to respond creatively to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic by engaging with audiences and responding to calls for greater equity and inclusion.
How Newspeak works …
… CW Greenlights Woke Series ‘Reimagining’ Jane Austen Classics To Show ‘Love And Family in Our Time Of Inequality’.
Jane Austen, like many authors in the pantheon of literature, has fallen into disfavor in recent years, amid concerns that western classics perpetuate ideas of “white supremacy” and in the wake of global “Black Lives Matter” protests.
No, Garry, you are …
… The Bishops Are Wrong About Biden — and Abortion.
What deceitfully select history we have here. What follows is a variety of comments from some noted ancient sources.
“Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill him when born.” Didache 2.2 (c.50-100 AD)
“The (Mosaic) law, moreover, enjoins us to bring up all our offspring and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten or to destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child by destroying a living creature and diminishing human kind.” Josephus, Against Apion 2.25 (c. 80 AD)
“The embryo therefore becomes a human being in the womb from the moment that its form is completed. The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion, inasmuch as there exists already the rudiment of a human being which has imputed to it even now the condition of life and death, since it is already liable to the issues of both, although, by living still in the mother, it for the most part shares its own state with the mother.” Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul 37 (c. 200 AD)
“If men fight and hurt a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follow, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follows (the death of mother or child), then you shall give life for life.” Exodus 21:22, 23
“You shall not abort a child, nor again, commit infanticide.” Letter of Barnabas 19.5 (c.130 AD)
Then there’s the science: The fetus is genetically different from the mother. Why doesn’t the maternal immune system reject it, as it ordinarily would reject something genetically different? Because in this case the maternal immune system actually prevents such rejection.
Interesting …
… Supreme Court Rules Natural Gas Company Has Right to Seize NJ Land for Pipeline.
About 50 years ago, I copyedited a book called Privilege and Creative Destruction: The charles River Bridge Case by the late Stanley I. Kutler. It is about how eminent domain came to be. That case was settled by the Supreme Court also. Justice Story delivered a notable dissent. It is a very good book — probably the cleanest manuscript I ever edited — and it can still be found. Very relevant these days.
Indeed …
… Stop Gaslighting Parents on Critical Race Theory | RealClearPolicy.
… words have meaning. Parents and policymakers should understand CRT not as conservatives or liberals define it, but as it defines itself. Here’s a definition from a 2001 book, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic, widely credited as key architects of CRT:
The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, context, group- and self-interest, and even feelings and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.
Something to think on …
Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.
— Czeslaw Milosz, born on this date in 1911
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
In case you wondered …
… Why Stephen Sondheim Is America’s Greatest Living Writer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Modern literature is full of difficult, challenging artists who toiled in obscurity until the public caught up with them and made them famous. Sondheim presents the much rarer case of an artist who started out at the heart of the establishment and moved away from it as his work became more ambitious and complex.
Something to think on …
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born on this date in 1900
Very interesting …
… Shocker: Lisbon court rules that only 0.9% of 'verified cases' attributed to COVID in Portugal actually died of it - American Thinker.
Normally, judicial rulings are based on the highest standard of evidence. But I am not able to read the supporting documents in Portuguese, and I cannot tell what procedures were used in gathering and weighing evidence. But my first instinct would be to believe a judicial ruling over figures gathered by politicians and the bureaucrats that report to them (and who, in many cases, have seen their powers vastly enhanced by the panic generated over COVID).
Good question …
… EXPLAIN THIS: Would You Suffer Years of Extreme Pain, Hardship For A Lie? - HillFaith Story.
So, ask yourself this: Paul claimed to have seen and talked with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Would anything less than an actual event have so totally and completely changed him from determined and deadly opponent of Christianity to the new faith’s most devoted advocate?
Intense prose …
… on Antiquities, a novel by Cynthia Ozick. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Her new novel Antiquities, set in 1949, is a haunting chronicle of an old, embittered man named Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie. As one of the remaining trustees of the defunct Temple Academy of Boys, he has been asked to write a memoir of his time at the boarding school which has stirred up disturbing memories. He visits his late wife’s grave once a month, but never more. He is drawn to his secretary for solace. His son has decamped to California to pursue a flagging career in filmmaking. Their intermittent, empty phone conversations disquiet him.
Hmm …
… The Hunger Artist: Thoreau and the Irony of Performance Art - The Millions.
Thoreau is now widely regarded as a nature writer and political activist, but a close look at both his life and works suggests an inherent performative quality. Take Walden and “Civil Disobedience,” two of his most famous pieces. He displayed his rejection of industrialization and materialism by living by the lake for two years, two months and two days; after being confined for one night in a Concord jail, he wrote “Civil Disobedience,” which embodied his resistance to slavery and the Mexican-American War. As Laura Dassow Walls beautifully puts it, Thoreau, known for his endeavors in “the experiment of life,” aspired “to turn life itself, even the simplest acts of life, into a form of art.” However, this performance artist side also makes him controversial.
A book for these days …
… Watching the World from Hetton | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Read today, A Handful of Dust may lack some of the obvious pleasures of other major works by Waugh. It has neither the acidic humor of Scoop (1938) nor the resplendent solemnity of Brideshead Revisited (1945). But at its center is a character whose condition, if not his circumstances, mirrors our own: the quintessential upper-class Englishman, Tony Last, who with his wife Brenda and young son John Andrew, leads a life in retreat from a hostile, declining society.
Monday, June 28, 2021
Happy birthday!
… Celebrating Mel Brooks, the Funniest Jew on Earth - Tablet Magazine.
Though he wrote for Sid Caesar throughout the 1950s and beyond, Mel’s big break came with the release of the “2000 Year Old Man” in 1960, recorded with his friend Carl Reiner. In it, Reiner plays the straight man to Brooks’ ancient storyteller, the twist being that the ancient man speaks like a Lower East Side loxmonger circa 1925. Part of what makes the conceit hilarious is that the 2000 Year Old Man’s responses to Reiner’s questions don’t often reflect the answer an ancient Israelite might give, but rather the answer that your great-uncle Sauly would. On Ed Sullivan in 1961, he waxes rhapsodic about the greatness of wax paper, “mankind’s greatest development.” When asked about the discovery of space he says, “That was good. That was nice. Finding space was cute.”
Still predicting the same thing after all these years …
… SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST.
So they’ve been making the same prediction for a quarter of a century, just moving the date ahead when necessary.
Hmm …
… Notes on Form: The Elegance of Wallace Stevens - FORMA Journal.
We must author a new religious fiction more believable than the old, Stevens holds.
I’ve been reading Stevens for well over half a century. He is one of my favorite poets. Reading the Collected Poems many years ago it struck me that Stevens was engaged over the years in a search for faith — a living faith, not a religious fiction. He was known to visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral during his trips to New York City and just sit there meditating. I believe the story of his deathbed reception into the Catholic Church. It seems perfectly logical to me.
Good news …
… The Supreme Court Unanimously Protects Religious Foster Agencies | RealClearReligion.
The persons in the city government responsible what the city attempted to do should be fired.
Getting to know us …
… Here be humans - Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning. We keep discovering how much less of humanity is… us.
… a great deal of circumstantial archaeological and genetic evidence is accumulating that some earlier African lineages related to modern humans expanded out into eastern Eurasia before our own expansion. Artifacts in China and Sumatradating to before 60,000 years ago seem suspiciously modern, and genetic analysis of Siberian Neanderthals dating to 120,000 years ago suggests admixture from populations related to modern humans. It is still possible that Homo longi descends from one of these early populations. Only DNA can establish this for a fact, but most older fossil remains do not yield genetic material, and this skull is old enough that only perfect conditions would have yielded DNA.
Something to think on …
Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.
— Alexis Carrel, born on this date in 1873
Sunday, June 27, 2021
Sounds good …
… Scoundrel by Sarah Weinman | Penguin Random House Canada. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who informs me that Terry Teachout calls the book a MUST-READ.)
Sarah used to review for me.
Bearing witness …
… A Poem by Carolyn Forché: Letter From Prague 1968-1978 - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Anniersary …
… the garden of delight by Lucille Clifton | Poetry Foundation.
Rus Bowden informs me that Lucille Clifton would have tirned 85 today.
Tackling a classic …
… Aeneid Wars - Athenaeum Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The earliest translators of these texts, such as Pope and Dryden, valued good poetry over literal accuracy. In the nineteenth century, academic philologists took over the field and tipped the balance toward painful literal accuracy and against the pleasures of poetry. Due to the sentimentality about Augustan Rome, translation of the Aeneid and other texts also suffered from avoidance of literal accuracy whenever it cast Rome in a bad light—so rape became romance, slaves became servants.
Rescue operation …
… Relocating a Frank Lloyd Wright house - CBS News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The fact that strangers will soon be spending the night in their home doesn't bother them at all. In fact, that's what they hoped for, especially after reactions like this from a German tourist, Rebecca: "Oh my God, coming to stay in a Frank Lloyd Wright house? That's like a dream come true!"
Good for her …
… Joyce Carol Oates slams Brandeis over ban on 'picnic,' other words.
The university in a prepared statement last week said the “was developed by students” and was “in no no way an accounting of terms that Brandeis students, faculty or staff are prohibited from using or must substitute instead.”The students who “developed” it must be among the dumbest in the school.
Favorites …
… THE POET REVISITS THE MOVIES. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I suppose I have watched Stevie fifteen times by now. I always show it to discerning friends who don’t know it. They are invariably moved.
To the rescue …
'Free to Learn' Coalition Exposes the Politicization of K-12 Schools in Brutal Ad Campaign.
“After a year of virtual learning and having a front-row seat in the classroom, parents are waking up to the increasingly political climate in their children’s schools,” Alleigh Marré, president of the Free to Learn Coalition, explained in a press release. “As we grow our partnerships with parent and community groups, the Free to Learn Coalition will provide a platform and tailored resources to those ready to take on political activism by school boards and administrators.”
Hmm …
… Massive human head in Chinese well forces scientists to rethink evolution | Anthropology | The Guardian.
The extraordinary fossil has been named a new human species, Homo longi or “Dragon man”, by Chinese researchers, although other experts are more cautious about the designation.
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (Genesis, 6-4]
Something to think on …
Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?
— Gaston Bachelard, born on this date in 1884
Saturday, June 26, 2021
Q&A …
… Forrest Gander on the Investment and Involvement Required of Reading Poetry. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In Conversation with Brad Listi on Otherppl.
Appreciation …
… 7 Guitarists That Prove Black Women Were Pioneers In Music History. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In case you wondered …
… Can jazz and hip-hop save dying languages? Indigenous bands say yes. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Takedown …
…Didion and Dunne, Hollywood Hacks? | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So I finished Monster, exhausted myself by Dunne’s account of all the tireless work that had gone into Up Close and Personal. Then I watched the movie. It was crap. Plastic. Riotously inauthentic, with zero resemblance to real human life. It felt as if it had been written by people who had never experienced human life but had only viewed a few hundred of the most contrived movies ever made. Watching it, I felt as if I’d seen every bit of it before and always knew exactly what was going to happen next.
Something to think on …
Exclusion is always dangerous. Inclusion is the only safety if we are to have a peaceful world.
— Pearl S. Buck, born on this date in 1892
RIP …
… Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Finzel resident Stephen Dunn dies at 82 | Local News | times-news.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also: Beyond Hammonton. ( hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Friday, June 25, 2021
A prophet for our time …
… My Soul Demanded It”: On Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Between Two Millstones” )Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Between Two Millstones is not a conventional, tidy literary memoir. It is too episodic and digressive for that. Solzhenitsyn’s style tends to be bluntly conversational, surprisingly slangy even in translation, never striving after elegance. Seldom has the act of writing been so viscerally described. His prose shares nothing with social science, academic history, or American autobiography, and his books, both novels and nonfiction, are notoriously difficult to judge by strictly aesthetic standards.
Star light, star bright …
… Astronomers work out when the first stars shone - BBC News. (Hat tip, Tim Davis.)
"The Holy Grail has been to look back far enough that you would be able to see the very first generation of stars and galaxies. And now we have the first convincing evidence of when the Universe was first bathed in starlight."
Something to think on …
That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
— George Orwell, born on this date in 1903
Q&A and much more …
… Photographer Captures the Magic of New Zealand in 8K Time-Lapse. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Shainblum's skill and experience shine through in this latest piece, with him expertly guiding viewers through different environments. This includes sweeping aerial views of mountains, beams of light streaming through the clouds, and the sun setting over placid waters.
Still useful after all these years …
… Why the first self-help book is still worth reading: The Anatomy of Melancholy anatomized - The Spectator World. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
You don’t have to take my word for it. The Anatomy is widely acclaimed as a classic. Laurence Sterne stole chunks from it for The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Samuel Johnson said it was the only book that got him out of bed early just to read it. Keats adored it. Borges’s Library of Babel is prefaced with lines from it. Samuel Beckett was a fan, and Anthony Burgess thought it one of the great comic works of the world. Welcoming the paperback edition in 2001, the critic Nick Lezard called it the best book ever written and the book to end all books. More recently, the publisher John Mitchell described it as some of the greatest prose from the greatest era of English prose.
In case you wondered …
… The Mysterious Eleusinian Mysteries: Part 1 | Classical Wisdom Weekly.
While the rituals were initially concerned with Demeter’s imparting gifts of fertility and the cyclical nature of creation, over time they focused more on immortality. Of the Mysteries, the poet Pindar (498 BCE – 436 BCE) opined: “Blessed is he who has beheld the mysteries, descending in the Netherworld. He knows the aim; he knows the origin of life.” To be sure, the main focus of the Mysteries was the happy afterlife initiates were promised.
Local cuisine …
… Birch Beer: The Best Soda You’ve Never Tried. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I live a few blocks away from the Center City Pretzel company.
Thursday, June 24, 2021
That’s for sure …
… Catholics Need a Crash Course on Communion | RealClearReligion.
Polls regularly show a gulf between the values of many American Catholics and the teachings of the Catholic Church. For instance, more than two-thirds of American Catholics support legalized same-sex marriage, according to a 2020 Gallup survey. Fifty-six percent of American Catholics agree with Biden and Pelosi, backing abortion being legal in most or all cases, per a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.
If you don’t agree with what the Catholic Church teaches, find another church. I do believe what the Church teaches and I don’t care whether those teachings are fashionable.
See also: A RESPONSE TO THE "STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES".
We believe the separation of church and state allows for our faith to inform our public duties and best serve our constituents.
Agreed. The trouble is that so many of the statement’s legislators seem to conform and restrict their faith to the platform of the Democratic party.
Raising an objection …
… The neutering of the Spanish tongue. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Latinx is at war with the Spanish language, with the Sierra Madre and her favorite, her first-born son, Macho. Latinx is at war with centuries of romance and sexual chauvinism and humor.
Something to think on …
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
— Ambrose Bierce, born on this date in 1842
Literary mystery …
… John Steinbeck’s letter to Marilyn Monroe: was it a fraud?!?
“Joan Atkinson points out that Steinbeck almost exclusively wrote his letters in longhand with a pencil. ‘I could not imagine that John Steinbeck would have had a typist or secretary from the office sign a letter like that for him. As personal as this subject was, it seems strange,’ she said.
Pilgrimage …
… In the footsteps of Shoeless Joe - The Spectator World. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
‘It don’t take school stuff to help a fella play ball,’ observed Joe, though the accounts of Jackson pathetically pretending to read menus and newspapers can soften even the most horsehide-hard heart.
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Yes, they should …
… Biden, abortion debate: Catholic bishops must teach truth on Communion.
Whatever the U.S. Catholic bishops do regarding this document on the Eucharist, I’m grateful we’re having this conversation. Asked about it by a reporter, Biden responded that it was a “private matter.” But given that Biden is open about being Catholic and also open about his pro-abortion position (one which I’d argue goes against science as well as Catholicism), the matter is rightly public.
A much sharper professor …
… Critical Race Theory May Violate Civil Rights Act, the Constitution: Dr. Carol Swain.
White people are protected in the same way that black people are by civil rights laws, she said. “We’re not a country where it’s acceptable to bully and shame people because of the color of their skin.”
Another pathetic prof …
… Cal State professor worries Victorian literature studies promote ‘white feminism’.
Where did she get her degree, out of a Cracker Jacks box?
The soul of wit …
… Towards the Heart of a Book: In Praise of the Epigraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The epigraph page is like a ceremonial gate ushering us into the realm of the author with his or her beloved quotation from a great mind or celebrated scamp that perfectly reflects, or distills, the essence of what follows.
Something to think on …
Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.
— Jean Anouilh, born on this date in 1910
Words and music …
… Humble Grass: Wayside Conversations on the Jerusalem Road by Maureen Swinger. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
We don’t know how Bristol came across these four exquisite stanzas by Dominican-American poet Rhina Espaillat. That detail would be fascinating to discover, but Bristol died in 1979 at age fifty-six after an extended illness, and Espaillat only recalls a brief exchange of permission letters from 1953. She would have been twenty-one at the time.
Q&A …
… Lionel Shriver Warns Readers Not to Meet Their Favorite Authors - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… We Just Got Even More Proof that Stay-At-Home Orders Lethally Backfired - Foundation for Economic Education.
“We fail to find that shelter-in-place policies saved lives,” the authors report. Indeed, they conclude that in the weeks following the implementation of these policies, excess mortality actually increases—even though it had typically been declining before the orders took effect. And across all countries, the study finds that a one-week increase in the length of stay-at-home policies corresponds with 2.7 moreexcess deaths per 100,000 people.
In case you wondered …
… How well do doctors understand probability? - Sebastian Rushworth M.D.
One of the things that always needs to be estimated in any individual consultation is probability. What is the probability that the breast lump is cancer? What is the probability that the fever is due to a serious bacterial infection? When faced with these questions, I think most doctors are more like an experienced chess player than a robot. They act on a feeling, not on a conscious weighing of probabilities. Doctors with a nervous disposition therefore order more tests and prescribe more antibiotics, while those with a more relaxed disposition order fewer tests and prescribe fewer antibiotics.
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Something to think on …
Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living.
— Erich Maria Remarque, born on this date in 1898
Submissions are open at North of Oxford …
Please follow the guidelines when submitting: About | North of Oxford.
Centenary …
… JazzProfiles: "The Rhythm, Romance, and Joy" of Erroll Garner by John Edward Hasse. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In September, to mark his centennial year, Mack Avenue Music Group and Octave Music will issue “Liberation in Swing,” an impressive boxed set of 189 Garner tracks. An accompanying coffee-table book samples his surprising visual art and offers insightful essays by singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, drummer Terri Lynne Carrington and Thelonious Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelley. This lavish package looks to be a contender for jazz gift of the year.
Good for them …
… The Lancet Updates Letter That Dubbed COVID-19 Lab Leak a ‘Conspiracy Theory.
“In this letter, the authors declared no competing interests. Some readers have questioned the validity of this disclosure, particularly as it relates to one of the authors, Peter Daszak,” the update states.
So relax …
… Perspective | Why bother organizing your books? A messy personal library is proof of life.
Books do furnish a room, as the English novelist Anthony Powell put it, but a living library is determined to look like a couch the cat scratches.
A worthwhile aim …
… Easy to Vote, Hard to Cheat | RealClearPolitics.
Whether or not voting machines were actually compromised, if people can’t trust them, they’re no good. So, we need something more trustworthy.
Indeed…
… Nigeness: Unmasked.
My correspondent writes that she sees people driving around on their own in their cars, wearing masks and gloves. So do I. It is a sign – one of many – of the state of irrational fear to which the government's panic reaction to Covid has reduced much of the population
Poetry and life …
… The Dead Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“The dead don’t get around / Much anymore,” the speaker in Donald Justice’s “Nostalgia and Complaint of the Grandparents” laments. A great-grandfather himself, at ninety-four my father doesn’t get around much anymore either.
Monday, June 21, 2021
Not just words on paper …
… The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is a common experience—and well established experimentally—that music can engage us emotionally in a compelling manner. The mechanisms underlying these experiences are receiving increasing scrutiny. However, the extent to which other domains of aesthetic experience can similarly elicit strong emotions is unknown. Using psychophysiology, neuroimaging and behavioral responses, we show that recited poetry can act as a powerful stimulus for eliciting peak emotional responses, including chills and objectively measurable goosebumps that engage the primary reward circuitry. Importantly, while these responses to poetry are largely analogous to those found for music, their neural underpinnings show important differences, specifically with regard to the crucial role of the nucleus accumbens. We also go beyond replicating previous music-related studies by showing that peak aesthetic pleasure can co-occur with physiological markers of negative affect. Finally, the distribution of chills across the trajectory of poems provides insight into compositional principles of poetry.