Sunday, June 09, 2019
Signs of the times …
… How modern myths are subversive .
…modern myths celebrate what is proscribed in a secular age. The secret of their success is appealing to an inner awareness of energies that are not material. Further, the stories suggest that we can learn to relate to this dynamism, and not simply try to control it. They alert us to a wisdom that is fundamental in a religious world-view. Spirit, the supernatural, and powers such as love are cosmic and potent.
Q&A …
… Jericho Brown —Small Truths and Other Surprises - The On Being Project. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Something to think on …
As soon as you come in the presence of God, remain in respectful silence for a little while… Simply Enjoy God.
— Madame Guyon, who died on this date in 1717
Saturday, June 08, 2019
Delightfully candid …
… Mary Karr Names Names | The Fix - Page 0. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
They always say God is in the truth, and I’ve ended loneliness and been able to feel connected by saying who I am and how I feel. I’m sort of comfortable to the degree to which I’m an asshole. It’s not like I’m not an asshole—people know the ways I’m an asshole and it’s within the realm of acceptable asshole-ocity. Part of my drinking and depression was having a voice in my head that was constantly criticizing everybody. I was sort of brought up that way, hypercritical, and I feel like my spiritual practice is a constant correction out of judging everybody else. But I think I’m more critical of myself than anybody, strangely enough, as marvelous as I am.
The 21st Poet Laureate …
… Simon Armitage: ‘I always thought, if Ted Hughes can do it why can’t I?’ | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
“I have chosen to dive into those occasions,” he says of his sense of artistic responsibility to engage with the world. But he’s always “tried to talk about the universal in terms of the particular”, such as the fictional British trader in the north tower of the World Trade Center in “Out of the Blue”. “That’s my modus operandi,” he says. Does a public poet require a new approach? “I can’t change my poetics over night. Big P political poetry rarely works anyway. Poetry is the art of subtlety and to try and meet these subjects head-on isn’t my style. I’m not even sure it is poetry’s style.”
A model for our times …
… On Free Speech and War, Charles Beard Was No Trimmer | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Beard, a national figure due to his iconoclastic Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States(1913), resigned in protest of the treatment of Dana and Cattell. “As you are aware,” he wrote Butler, “I was among the first to urge a declaration of war by the United States, and I believe that we should now press forward with all our might to a just conclusion.”But “thousands of my countrymen,” among them Dana and Cattell, “do not share this view,” and “[t]heir opinions cannot be changed by curses or bludgeons.”
Something to think on …
To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tantamount to constant travel: One is traveling with the earth.
— Marguerite Yourcenar, born on this date in 1903
Friday, June 07, 2019
State of an industry …
… Book sales are steady, but tariffs are on publishers’ minds. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
… publishing faces troubling unknowns and adjustments. Barnes & Noble, the country’s largest physical book retailer, has been struggling for years and is considering a sale of the company. One of the largest distributors, Baker & Taylor, is ending its retail business, forcing some stores to find new ways to keep books in stock. And publishers again face a potential shortage of printing capacity that resulted in two future Pulitzer Prize winners, David Blight’s biography “Frederick Douglass” and Richard Powers’ novel “The Overstory,” being among numerous releases unavailable for extended stretches late last year.
Caveat emptor …
… A new book says married women are miserable. Don’t believe it. - Vox. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is only the most recent example of a visible trend — books by prestigious and well-regarded researchers go to print with glaring errors, which are only discovered when an expert in the field, or someone on Twitter, gets a glance at them.
Once upon a time, I copyedited books — for likes of Lippincott and Fortress Press. Maybe publishers don't have copy editors anymore. When I was a copy editor, I kept my eyes open for questionable theses.
In case you wondered …
… How to Write Audio Drama – Reluctant Habits.
Audio drama is a magnificent medium. It shares much in common with literature in its ability to challenge an audience and convey emotional intimacy. And while shows such as The Bright Sessions, Wooden Overcoats, and The Truth intuitively comprehend the emotional connection between audio drama and audience, the medium, on the whole, is populated by too many engineering nerds who are not only incapable of writing quality scripts, but seem reluctant — if not outright hostile — to probe moral questions or explore any difficult ambiguities that lead to human insight.
Q&A …
… How Michael Brendan Dougherty subverted the Irish misery memoir. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I didn't like Angela's Ashes when I read it. One paper, I think The Cork Examiner, went through its archives and found pictures of the supposedly disease-ridden McCourt boys looking quite fine in their sports uniforms belonging to one of the better clubs in Limerick. This archetype of the Irish misery memoir is out there, and on some level I had been primed to believe my father was essentially someone that just slogged off all his responsibilities to me, and it was a good surprise in adulthood to find that wasn't true.
Something to think on …
Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.
— Elizabeth Bowen, born on this date in 1899
Strange configuration …
… Campion, Waugh and household under fire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Two very different books by Evelyn Waugh – his biography of Edmund Campion and novel Brideshead Revisited – are intertwined in language, theology and publishing history
Thursday, June 06, 2019
Devastating …
… Back in the MLA | A survivor of academia returns to a troubled field. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As the humanities decline in the United States, the country is losing the craft of understanding, losing its capacity for citizenship. Even educated people are increasingly unable and unwilling to distinguish between fake and real information, becoming a community that cannot understand itself as anything more than a circulation of figures. Self-righteousness takes the place of substantive discussion. Narcissism and outrage become the dominant techniques of self-definition. And the cure for all these problems is the same: read widely, read deeply, read.Credentialed assholes are no substitute for passionate scholars.
Maybe …
… Happy Birthday Inky! | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog.
I say maybe because the Sunday came with a page-load of mastheads, one of which boasted that the paper was the oldest in the nation, founded in 1771. Well, which is it folks — 1771 or 1829?
Lest we forget …
… Paul Davis On Crime: A Pure Miracle: Ernie Pyle's D-Day Column.
In this column I want to tell you what the opening of the second front in this one sector entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.See also: Voyage To Victory: Novelist And War Correspondent Ernest Hemingway's On The D-Day Invasion.
Short answer, yes …
… When We Read the Bible as Literature, Do We Retain Its Truths? | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
To read literally is to read one-dimensionally. Language is not one-dimensional.
Clearing things up …
… Beyond the Crossroads Myth | Chapter 16. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Revered blues scholars Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow tell [the] story—and separate the truths from the myths in popular accounts of the musician’s life—in an important and revealing new biography, Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson.
Mark thy calendar …
An Evening of Poetry At The Green Line Cafe
With JEN ANAOLIK, ANGEL HOGAN & JERRY MORGAN
Hosted by Leonard Gontarek
Tuesday, JUNE 18, 2019, 6-7:30 PM
THE GREEN LINE CAFE
45TH & LOCUST STREETS
Presented by POETRY IN COMMON & THE GREEN LINE CAFÉ POETRY SERIES
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
PHILADELPHIA, PA USA
With JEN ANAOLIK, ANGEL HOGAN & JERRY MORGAN
Hosted by Leonard Gontarek
Tuesday, JUNE 18, 2019, 6-7:30 PM
THE GREEN LINE CAFE
45TH & LOCUST STREETS
Presented by POETRY IN COMMON & THE GREEN LINE CAFÉ POETRY SERIES
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
PHILADELPHIA, PA USA
(Please note the address, there are other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
gontarek9@earthlink.net
This Event Is Free
Jerry Morgan is a practicing pharmacist who grew up in rural Western Maryland. While his main life path did not ultimately lead him to writing, he has always enjoyed creating things and expressing himself through words. He uses his writings to explore connections between people and the day-to-day experiences that make up one’s life.
In addition to writing, he enjoys running and drinking cider. He has lived in Philadelphia the past 6 years and now likes to call it home.
Angel Hogan has performed as part of the Black Women’s Arts Festival, Literary Death Match, Moonstone Presents, First Person Arts and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Angel worked with ArtWell, was a Contributing Editor to Philadelphia Stories, and a review panelist for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. As a teaching artist, Angel is most interested in initiatives that use storytelling as a vehicle for tolerance, peace, and community building. Her first film, By Law, By Love, was completed in March of 2019. See more at: www.angelhogan.com
Jennifer Anolik is an educator, writer, and third generation Holocaust survivor. When she is not writing poetry, she designs curriculum for Moving Traditions’ Jewish teen programs. She has taught and developed curriculum for teens in after-school and enrichment programs focused on gender, sexuality, poetry, art, and mindfulness meditation. Her poetry has appeared in Construction, Infinite Rust, Apiary Online, and other publications.
greenlinecafe.com
gontarek9@earthlink.net
This Event Is Free
Jerry Morgan is a practicing pharmacist who grew up in rural Western Maryland. While his main life path did not ultimately lead him to writing, he has always enjoyed creating things and expressing himself through words. He uses his writings to explore connections between people and the day-to-day experiences that make up one’s life.
In addition to writing, he enjoys running and drinking cider. He has lived in Philadelphia the past 6 years and now likes to call it home.
Angel Hogan has performed as part of the Black Women’s Arts Festival, Literary Death Match, Moonstone Presents, First Person Arts and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Angel worked with ArtWell, was a Contributing Editor to Philadelphia Stories, and a review panelist for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. As a teaching artist, Angel is most interested in initiatives that use storytelling as a vehicle for tolerance, peace, and community building. Her first film, By Law, By Love, was completed in March of 2019. See more at: www.angelhogan.com
Jennifer Anolik is an educator, writer, and third generation Holocaust survivor. When she is not writing poetry, she designs curriculum for Moving Traditions’ Jewish teen programs. She has taught and developed curriculum for teens in after-school and enrichment programs focused on gender, sexuality, poetry, art, and mindfulness meditation. Her poetry has appeared in Construction, Infinite Rust, Apiary Online, and other publications.
Something to think on …
Stupid — well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
— Thomas Mann, born on this date in 1875
Wednesday, June 05, 2019
Congratulations all around …
…Non-diversity and the spelling bee :: Jeff Jacoby.
In case a glance at the kids' names doesn't make it obvious, all but one of the champions is of Indian descent. Since 1999, the children of immigrants from South Asia have usually crushed the world's most prestigious spelling bee. Is that a problem? Should we be lamenting the lack of diversity in the top ranks of competitive student spellers? Ought Scripps and ESPN (which broadcasts the annual spelling bee) manipulate the rules — the way Harvard, for example, has manipulated its admissions standards — to ensure that more non-Asians make it to the final rounds?
Why should we be surprised …
… Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far? | News | The Guardian.
As people got used to the new law, the number of Dutch people being euthanised began to rise sharply, from under 2,000 in 2007 to almost 6,600 in 2017. (Around the same number are estimated to have had their euthanasia request turned down as not conforming with the legal requirements.) Also in 2017, some 1,900 Dutch people killed themselves, while the number of people who died under palliative sedation – in theory, succumbing to their illness while cocooned from physical discomfort, but in practice often dying of dehydration while unconscious – hit an astonishing 32,000. Altogether, well over a quarter of all deaths in 2017 in the Netherlands were induced.
Getting our bearings …
…Barzun: Classic, Romantic, and Modern | All Manner of Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Barzun, even in his epilogue, was writing only at the beginning of the 1960s, and, astute as he was, he seems not to have foreseen the cultural upheavals just a few years in his future. How I wish that he could have written a third edition in, say, the 1980s. It’s pretty clear that the 1960s were, in his taxonomy, a romantic period, with a rapid development of new artistic expressions, and a general breakdown of norms in art, sexuality, and society. Its aftermath is all around us, though I wonder if there are, perhaps, nascent signs of a return to classicism? Many people have documented the marked contrast between the children of the 1960s and the new “millenial” generation, which is more likely to be risk averse, less tolerant of unfamiliar ideas and the free expression of them, and more narrowly moralistic, though its list of sins runs along novel lines.
Tat tvam asi …
… A Review of Reema Zaman’s I Am Yours | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
Six years ago, I worked as a trauma therapist, helping clients understand and revise the stories they tell about painful experiences. Now, I teach classes in memoir. Trauma is a frequent guest at our workshop tables. Sometimes it’s an uncontained beast that threatens to derail projects. As an instructor, I constantly seek tools students can use to safely house their suffering and mold chaotic experiences into something ordered. A favorite is the Soham meditation—a Sanskrit mantra that roughly translates as I am that. It serves as both repository for errant thoughts and reminder that our essential nature is powerful and good.
Listen in …
… The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale: David Robinson on copyright, book publishing and fair dealing in Canada.
David Robinson is executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. He has been with CAUT since 1999, when he was first hired as director of communications. Prior to joining CAUT, Robinson was the senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada’s leading progressive think-tank. He has also been a lecturer at Simon Fraser University, and Carleton University in Ottawa. He is the author of numerous articles, reviews, and reports on higher education and research policy, vocational education and training, and international trade and investment agreements.
Something to think on …
I hate all politics. I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them — one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.
— Ray Bradbury, who died on this date in 2012
Tuesday, June 04, 2019
Who we are …
… A striking, joyful portrait of America's greatest divide. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here is an excerpt from the book: Back Row America. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dignity is a modern classic, worthy of Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, and even of Dickens. This comparison to the author of Bleak House is not facile; it speaks both to Arnade's talents and to the sort of criticism he is likely to receive. Orwell complained that it was "hopeless to try and pin [Dickens] down to any definite remedy, still more to any political doctrine" because "he is always pointing to a change of spirit rather than a change of structure." Like Orwell, I suspect that many of Arnade's readers will take him to task for not offering any "solutions." He anticipates as much in his epilogue, where he says that his only real conclusion is that "we all need to listen to each other more" and calls his position "wishy-washy." It is nothing of the sort.
Here is an excerpt from the book: Back Row America. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Anniversary …
… RTD’s Marginalia Redux: Pulitzer Prizes.
Once upon a time, I was a Pulitzer juror. Nonfiction, though.
Once upon a time, I was a Pulitzer juror. Nonfiction, though.
Blogging note …
I won't be blogging again until much later, since I have to leave in a few minutes to pay a visit to The Inquirer.
Reality and its compications …
… on Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories by Maxim Osipov, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk, Alex Fleming and Anne Marie Jackson – On the Seawall. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Osipov’s subject matter is both interesting and pertinent. As a doctor who has worked for many years in a provincial hospital, he expresses a profound understanding of contemporary Russian life, including its seamiest aspects – and he imparts this knowledge without the least hint of didacticism. What makes him a great writer, though, is the subtlety with which he allows the different voices in his stories to respond to one another, sometimes amplifying, sometimes contradicting one another – as in a string quartet, which Osipov says is his favorite form of all. A motif of “Moscow-Petrozavodsk,” repeated in different contexts, is the phrase “Killers – they’re just your average people.” When we first hear this phrase, we may not quite accept it. But by the end of the story, we do. Each repetition endows it with more resonance.
Indeed …
… DNA Testing Giveth, and Taketh Away. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The one I had done initially indicated that I was 2 percent Jewish. I was happy to learn that. But then I got word later that it was not so. I'm overwhelmingly Irish, it seems, with a bit of Polish and a smidgin of German. The rest? Who knows. Not as exotic as I hoped, that's for sure.
And know there are two …
… On Poetry: The border is where you can see both sides | Local News | record-eagle.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The house finches have been passing through these parts. One yesterday sat on a wire and tweeted away in a most lovely manner.
To tell or not …
… Adrienne Rich on secrets - Clancy Martin - Bookforum Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The great philosopher of secrets in the twentieth century is Adrienne Rich, especially in her collection of essays On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Rich is concerned with the secrets we fear to tell anyone, the secrets that isolate us from one another. For Rich, the human wish to keep and share secrets goes to the very heart of why we want intimacy at all, and why we value art. Rich was herself familiar with secrecy: She felt that she had to keep her own sexuality hidden until after her husband’s death (he committed suicide when Rich was forty-one).
Year of marvels …
… Nicholas Roe - The Pen & the Spade | Literary Review | Issue 476. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It’s worth reminding ourselves that there was nothing inevitable about any of this. Living day by day, wandering here and there across the hills, none of them had any sense at the time that something extraordinary was happening. Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ came to him by chance at a lonely farmhouse on the edge of Exmoor, a consequence of taking opium ‘to check a dysentery’. Nicolson tinkers with the idea that the poem’s incense-laden pleasure ground might have been based on Alfoxden Park, where ‘Wordsworth Khan’ was ‘pregnant with greatness’ and, by implication, about to produce. As it turned out, Wordsworth would not make any significant poetry until at least the spring of 1798, and arguably not before July, when he wrote ‘Tintern Abbey’.
Something to think on …
To philosophize is not to solve problems but to live them at a certain level.
— Don Colacho
Monday, June 03, 2019
Listen in …
… Episode 323 – Hugh Ryan – The Virtual Memories Show.
“I come to these stories in part because I’m trying to find myself.”
Hmm …
… RTD’s Marginalia Redux: Fiction — does it make you a better person?
It is we ourselves who make ourselves better or worse. Books — including works of fiction — can be of help. But as Lichtenberg said, “A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.”
In case you wondered …
… The American Scholar: Finding Your Voice — How Larry Woiwode discovered his when he stopped looking for it and learned instead to listen. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For a writer who constructs his or her style in such a way, however, that’s how it feels: constructed. The novelist Elmore Leonard once said in an interview, “I try not to use constructions that are obviously written constructions.” After a year or more of attempting to formulate a style, I realized the admonition to do so was as helpful as saying, “Develop an extra frontal lobe.” So I started to write and write, without focusing on creating a voice, and when I had what I felt was a story, I gave it to my favorite reader, soon to be my spouse, to read. Her name is Carole—her mother likely a fan of the movie star Lombard.
Do I contradict myself?
… very well, then. I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes: Bernie Sanders Brooks ’No Middle Ground’ on Any Issue, Especially Climate, Health Care, Guns, and Abortion. Yet He Still Blames Trump for Division...
I have lived long enough to see the worst political class in the country’s history. Bernie is hardly the worst.
I have lived long enough to see the worst political class in the country’s history. Bernie is hardly the worst.
Second thoughts …
… Whose Secret Is It? What I Wish I Hadn’t Shared In My Memoir | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
I didn’t know I had exposed a family secret …
Much in what he says …
… Edward Feser: Continetti on post-liberal conservatism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
…in my opinion, only someone blinded by ideology could deny the astounding and unequaled power of the market economy to lift human beings out of poverty, or the irrational and impoverishing nature of central planning. Socialism is idiotic as well as evil, and no one who is unwilling to acknowledge that is to be taken seriously on matters of politics and economics. At the same time, it is no less ideologically blinkered to deny the corrosive moral and social consequences of modeling all human relations on market transactions between sovereign individuals, or to deny that private financial power poses grave dangers just as governmental power does. As I argued in my recent Claremont Review of Books essay on Hayek, liberal individualism undermines the family and national loyalties, which in turn undermines even the preconditions for the stability of the market itself. And the “woke capitalism” of the modern corporation may turn out to be as insidious a threat to the moral order and to freedom of thought and expression as anything the U.S. government has done.
It is easier to resist such temptations when you have no illusions in the first place that your ideas are likely to have much electoral success. You can depoliticize political philosophy in the sense of focusing on inquiring into what is actually true, without being distracted by questions about what will play well with voters or be conducive to forming political alliances. And in the long run, when implementation becomes more feasible, it is also likelier to be successful, because the theory will have been worked out more rigorously.
A still, small voice …
… How Poetry Quiets the ‘Pandemonium of Blab’ | Christianity Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… as Wiman writes, “Resurrection is a fiction and a distraction to anyone who refuses to face the reality of death.” I claimed this book could tune our ears to silence, but I might have said it could tune our ears to what Wiman calls the “final silence” of death. …Who among us is eager to confront the prospect of our own demise? The answer to this question goes far in explaining our collective addiction to the “pandemonium of blab.”
In case you wondered …
… Do the French take their literature seriously? The furor over “La Princesse de Cléves”! | The Book Haven.
[Sarkozy's] comments triggered a full-blown scandal, and the French people took to defending the work as a pillar of their national and cultural heritage, a work they felt should be read and appreciated by everyone, not mocked as irrelevant. University strikes that year gave rise to marathon public readings throughout the country of La Princesse de Clèves as a form of protest. Publishers saw sales of the book double within a year. Even a book fair in Paris that year sold, in mere hours, more than 2,000 pins that said “I read The Princess of Clèves” and “This year, the Princess will vote!”
Something to think on …
It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.
— Franz Kafka, who died on this date in 1924
Sunday, June 02, 2019
Stirring things up …
… Morrissey hasn’t turned right: our establishment has turned insane | Spectator USA.
Anyone who considers Morrissey’s multi-decade career can see that he hasn’t changed. Whether it was his war against meat, his ambiguous sexuality, or wearing a For Britain pin badge on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Morrissey has never stopped being a provocateur.
What can I say?
… Upstairs Downstairs At The Inquirer | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
That so many of the key players declined to be interviewed for this tells you everything you need to know about their journalistic integrity.
His own man …
… A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Remembering Reagan in the Age of Trump. | Frontpage Mag. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
From the outset … Reagan’s opponents treated him as a genial boob. Thus Gerald Ford – a genuine mediocrity, party hack, and veteran D.C. drone who is best remembered, by me anyway, for denying in a debate that Poland was a Soviet satellite – at first responded to Reagan’s 1976 primary challenge by saying that he couldn’t take the ex-actor seriously. Sen. Jacob Javits (R-NY) called Reagan “extreme”; the now-forgotten Sen. Charles Percy (R-IL) predicted that a Reagan nomination would result in “crushing defeat.”Here is my review of Reagan: A Life in Letters.
Beauty and truth …
… First Known When Lost: Once.
Long-time readers of this blog may recall my two essential poetic principles (i. e., truisms that no doubt try your patience by now). The first: It is the individual poem that matters, not the poet. And, begging your forbearance, the second: Explanation and explication are the death of poetry.Right on both counts.
Amazing …
… Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson Learns How the House Works.
First, the guy deserves an A for candor. What I am amazed at is that this could be possible. My guess is he never had a civics class. I don’t know if they have such anymore in the schools. It is pretty obvious from recent political discourse that a lot of people don’t understand why we have an electoral college. Worse, when they found out why, they didn’t like it. Because it could cost their side an election. Had it been the other way around, they would have loved it.
Appreciation …
… The Penetrating Gaze of One of America’s Most Brilliant Art Critics - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
His specialty is the searching, summative essay of a few pages on a single artist. (Spearing “that little eel in the middle — that marrow,” as Virginia Woolf wrote.) Journalism may have imposed the format upon him, but it’s also, by happy chance, the ideal medium for his gifts. Like Lydia Davis, he writes with remarkable tensile beauty and closeness of observation. Any dilation of either’s work tends to diminish it.
Something to think on …
The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
— Thomas Hardy, born on this date in 1840
Saturday, June 01, 2019
Indeed …
… Harvard Is An Embarrassment To American Higher Education.
Fortunately, many famous liberal icons on the Harvard Law faculty are appalled. Writing in the New York Times, Randall Kennedy said Harvard "has never so thoroughly embarrassed itself as it did." Laurence Tribe said, according to Peter Berkowitz's account in Real Clear Politics, "Of many blunders, Harvard has made in my 50 years ...here, I recall none worse." Alan Dershowitz weighed in: "feeling 'unsafe' is the new mantra for the new McCarthyism..... It is a totally phony argument." Some 52 members of the Harvard Law faculty, in a letter to the Boston Globe, strongly condemned the action as well.
Hmm …
… Terrance Hayes transforms the sonnet into something new. (Hat tips, Rus Bowden and Dave Lull.)
Here’s another take on this piece: The Racist Trope of Stephanie Burt. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
American Sonnets is something bigger than that. Usually in a collection of sonnets each will have a different title, or (as in Shakespeare) no title at all. Instead, each poem here has, over and over, the same title: “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin.” Hayes’ 14-line projects react to the poet’s own frustration with his fame (which eats up his time with worthy obligations, isolates him, and cannot give him peace), as well as reacting fiercely to America under Trump. Hayes’ new sonnets also replace conventional rhyme schemes with much denser sonic arrangements, often untethered to line ends.The sonnet has been done in fresh ways by others, notably Gerard Manly Hopkins, but is usually allowed to retain its signature characteristics. If I write a 19-line poem that consists of five three-line stanzas and a concluding four-line stanza, but lacks any lines repeating in a certain familiar pattern I may not want to call it a villanelle. I could just leave it to somebody else to note a certain similarity. As for frustration with fame, you can just keep to yourself. And to turn poems into op-eds is usually an abuse of poetry. What gives a poet any special authority to opine on politics? No poem written in this country is going to land you in jail or win you a trip to the gallows — though it may win you some notoriety. But be careful of that — it’s a lot like fame. And, by the way, I rather like that anecdote about Orpheus. The business about sonnets is a needless distraction.
Here’s another take on this piece: The Racist Trope of Stephanie Burt. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Q&A …
… It’s Our Time: Cave Canem’s Founder on the Power of Poetry - The Millions. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
June Reviews and an Interview at North of Oxford …
Something to think on …
The days that make us happy make us wise.
— John Masefield, born on this date in 1878
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