Stefan Zweig

I've just completed my review of Stefan Zweig's collection of essays, Messages from a Lost World. That review is slated to appear in Rain Taxi later this summer. For now, let me say: what a dark, haunting collection; what an homage to Europe; and what a lament for all that was lost. For those interested in Zweig and in Europe between the wars, Messages is essential reading, not least because the ten essays it contains are published for the first time in English. More on Zweig and his contributions to European letters here.

A contrarian's notes …

…“don’t get him started” | Elberry's Ghost.

2. In our culture, victimhood is a mark of pride, to be held high and flourished, forsooth. i suspect this is the first time in human history that people are proud to be victims, and in which a victim economy encourages the falsification of grievance. Such fancies could only come to pass in a soft, late civilisation; they would be impossible in a warrior culture, or any culture with an awareness of the essentially savage and merciless nature of things, over which civilisation is a difficult and fragile facade. In “nature”, an animal which rolls onto its back, whining, feigning terrible injuries in order to excite pity, would be promptly gobbled up by the nearest predator.

In brief …

… Issa's Untidy Hut: Patrick Sweeney & Chen-ou Liu: Wednesday Haiku, #228.

Island greenery …

… Poetry in English leaves of grass – archive, 16 May 1936 | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Showing, not just telling …

… The Best Kind of Political Artist - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Mr. Hare explains in “The Blue Touch Paper” why he takes care to humanize the participants in both sides of the debates that he dramatizes. He learned early on that political activists who go to the theater detest complexity above all things, and his explanation of why this is so deserves to be quoted at length: “When people tell you they value political art, what they often mean is that they enjoy political propaganda which corroborates what they already think. All kinds of groups, including socialists and feminists, would ask me to reconfigure work in order to show what ought to happen instead of what does. I grew used to having to argue to the literal-minded that drama is not and cannot be a cartoon form of exhortation. It is about people, it is not about types.”

The master's voice …

… Listen to Robert Frost Read His Poems | Smart News | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Art and science …

… Astronomers Recreate Ancient Skies to Date a Nearly 2,600-Year-Old Greek Poem | Smart News | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

RIP …

… Joe Temperley obituary | Music | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Just a thought …

Sooner or later, when you take a good look at life, pay attention to it, you notice that it doesn't lend itself to explanation. It isn't about explanation. It's about demonstration.

On second thought, it's about revelation.

Something to think on …

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne, who died on this date in 1864

Bravo!

… Boris Johnson wins The Spectator's President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition | Coffee House. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I certainly hope Erdogan hears of this. 

At home in Austenland …

… Whit Stillman’s “Love & Friendship”: Subverting the Social Order with Style - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

And the winners are .

… Nigeria: Two Nigerians Clinch 2016 Brunel Poetry Prize - allAfrica.com. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)

Q&A …

… For Pulitzer Prize-Winner Gregory Pardlo, Poetry Offers 'Intimacy' Between Strangers : NPR. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)

For your listening pleasure

… Paul Davis On Crime: A Little Night Music: Stay Young At Heart - Incognito's Cover Of "That's The Way Of the World'.

Hear, hear …

… ‘Bondage’ Revisited | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I was lucky. Two of my English professors in college actually liked Maugham. So do I. His short stories are outstanding, and his trio of literary virtues — clarity, simplicity, and euphony — are favorites of mine also.

Listen in …

… Episode 168 – Harry Katz | Virtual Memories.

"What connected Levine and Herblock was the fire in the belly, the outrage against people who try to impose their power over the powerless, who try to disenfranchise people, who try to manipulate the laws for personal gain or prestige.”

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes …

… Weird Book Genres | EW.com. (Hat tip, Dan Bloom.)

Serious, warm, and supremely human …

… Rediscovering a Maestro - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Something to think on …

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

— William Saroyan, who died on this date in 1981

No thank you, Sir …

…Petraeus: Self-Censor to Avoid Offending Muslims | PJ Media.

I'll say whatever I please, and if somebody takes offense, that's their problem — and they'd do well to keep it to themselves.

Reasonable doubt...

...The False Promise of DNA Testing

Hmm …

…Journalists Make Rotten Businessmen - Just Ask These Two - Forbes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

My experience of the business side of journalism is that the people in charge spend too much time trying to attract new readers. So, when seeking to economize, they usually decide that book coverage can be cut, because the readers they seek to attract aren't interested in books, forgetting that the people who are interested in books tend to be interested in reading other things as well. In this city, on Sunday's, The Inquirer's principal competition is the New York Times, in large part because the Times still has a stand-alone book section. But that section — for which I once wrote — is a shadow of its former self. The Inquirer could easily and inexpensively put out a competitive counterpart. 

Warning …

… Micro-Totalitarianism | RealClearPolitics.

Word games are just one of the ways of silencing politically incorrect ideas, instead of debating them. Demands that various conservative organizations be forced to reveal the names of their donors are another way of silencing ideas by intimidating people who facilitate the spread of those ideas. Whatever the rationale for wanting those names, the implicit threat is retaliation.
This same tactic was used, decades ago, by Southern segregationists who tried to force black civil rights organizations to reveal the names of their donors, in a situation where retaliation might have included violence as well as economic losses.

Diversity …

… Five Lost Languages Rediscovered in Massachusetts | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Goddard's research begs the question of how many other native American languages may have been missed.

I think it raises the question. The Smithsonian should know better: Begging the Question.

In modern vernacular usage, "to beg the question" is sometimes used to mean "to invite the question" (as in "This begs the question of whether...") or "to dodge a question".[2] These usages are often criticized as being mistaken.

That's because they are mistaken. I also think we're talking about the languages of the indigenous population, not just the languages of people who were born here.

Poetry of witness …

… Poetry is a perfect form to challenge human rights abuses | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Something to think on …

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

— Lloyd Alexander, who died on this date in 2007

Life Imagined and life lived …

… A Review of Bernadette Murphy’s Harley and Me | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Offbeat structures …

… A Review of B.J. Hollars’ This Is Only a Test | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Worth considering …

… Dear "Skeptics," Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More - Scientific American Blog Network. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Well, I don't subscribe to the deep-roots theory of war, but war is certainly an innovation that caught on, and I have yet to see any really viable plan for eliminating it. That said, this is a refreshing piece.

Q&A …

… Ennyman's Territory: David Pichaske Talks About Poetry, Culture and His Insightful Dylan Study: Song of the North Country. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

For my generation, music was the dominant mode of cultural statement: forget TV, school textbooks, and magazines: we had record players, FM radio (which played music most top-forty AM stations would not play) and reel-to-reel tape recorders. This was our private world, as social media are the private world of today’s youth. And it was a world of sound and words. The tip-off is the song lyrics printed on the jackets of 33 1/3 LPs: we were all paying attention to the words.

Way beyond parody …

… The Craziest Writings Of Social Justice Warrior Academics.

History nuggets …

via Jim Remsen:

"Southern Stunt Surpasses Huns." With that 1918 headline, The Chicago Defender, the leading black newspaper of its day, reported on the killing of a black man by drunken whites in Jonesboro, Ark. The mob tied the doomed man to railroad tracks and watched as a passing mail train did its grisly work. The killers then deposited the man's headless body at a funeral parlor with a crude note about the "drunken darkie." I found the account in a book about The Defender that I've been reading to find possible links to The Scranton Defender, another gutsy newspaper of the era. What struck me about the killing wasn't just the horror of the crime but the official aftermath. A white postmaster in Texas refused to deliver the edition and complained to his superiors that The Defender was fomenting "rank race hatred which shows signs of German conspiracy" and might lessen support for America's entry into World War I. The postal service had the same shoot-the-messenger response. It warned The Defender that it could run afoul of the Espionage Act and said any article suggesting black people "are being just as badly treated by the whites of America as they would be by the whites of Germany tends to interfere in the cause of the United States and should have no place in a loyal newspaper." Fortunately, The Defender kept up its matter-of-factual reporting on lynchings and injustice.

"Bringing in The Captured Guns." My dear cousin Terry West recently mailed me a priceless heirloom--a scrapbook that one of our ancestors compiled during the Civil War. Being 150 years old, its pages are faded and brittle, but boy, did its glue hold those news clippings in place. And zounds, the centerpiece was an original image from Harper's Weekly that depicts a battlefield victory by the very soldiers I'm profiling in my book! The victory occurred in June 1864 at Petersburg and changed white attitudes about black troops. I cover the historic event at length in the book, and already planned to use that same image, titled, "The colored infantry bringing in the captured guns, amid the cheers of the Ohio troops." So who was my ancestral scrapbooker? Cousin Terry suspects he/she was a kin of our great-grandfather James B. Martin, who served in the war, behind the lines as a bricklayer. Did my mysterious scrapbooker perhaps have a special affinity for the black cause? I'll see what I can find out. Meanwhile, below,  and attached, is a photo of the scrapbook spread, along with a photo of my great-granddad soon before his death in 1913.

Tomorrow night …

PEACE/WORKS,

POETRY IN COMMON,

& THE GREEN LINE CAFE
POETRY SERIES

PRESENT: A Panel Discussion

with Sarah Blake, Angel Hogan &

Sekai’afua Zankel

on I’m Learning Nothing This Night
by Reginald Dwayne Betts

and Sound & Fury by Claudia Rankine

(The texts of the poems are below)


The Forum Will Include Discussion
Of The Poems And Their Relationship
To The Current Political Scene


An Audience Q & A Will Follow


TUESDAY, May 17, 2016 7-8:30 PM

MODERATED BY
LEONARD GONTAREK

45TH & LOCUST STREETS,
Philadelphia, PA

http://greenlinecafe.com/


This Event Is Free


Sarah Blake is the author of Mr. West, an unauthorized lyric biography of Kanye West. Her first chapbook is forthcoming from Banango Editions with an illustrated companion workbook. Her poems have appeared, or will soon, in the Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Threepenny Review, and others. She was awarded an NEA fellowship for poetry in 2013, and she is founder of Submittrs.



Angel Hogan has performed as part of the Black Women’s Arts Festival, Literary Death Match and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She has acted as a Contributing Editor to Philadelphia Stories, a review panelist for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and a board member at The Hacktory. As a local teaching artist she is most interested in initiatives that use storytelling as a vehicle for tolerance, peace, and community building.



Sekai’afua Zankel has worked at the Church of the Advocate and has acted at Freedom Theater. She is the author of Behind These Eyes / Optical Poems which  won the Frank Moore Poetry Prize in 2008 and was awarded a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant in 2009. Her poems have been published in the CAP literary magazine and Apiary. She was born on the first day of spring.







Sound & Fury                            Claudia Rankine


Dispossessed despair, depression, despondent
dejection, the doom is the off-white of white. But wait,
white can’t know what white feels. Where’s the life in that?
Where’s the right in that? Where’s the white in that?

At the bone of bone white breathes the fear of seeing,
the frustration of being unequal to white. White-male portraits
on white walls were intended to mean ownership of all,
the privilege of all, even as white walls white in.

And this is understandable, yes,
understandable because the culture claims white
owns everything—the wealth
of no one anyone knows. Still the equation holds—
jobs and health and schools and better than
before and different from now and enough
and always and eventually mine.

This is what it means to wear a color and believe
the embrace of its touch. What white long expected
was to work its way into an upwardly mobile fit.
In the old days white included a life, even without luck
or chance of birth. The scaffolding had rungs
and legacy and the myth of meritocracy fixed in white.

Now white can’t hold itself distant from the day’s touch—
even as the touch holds so little white would own—
foreclosure vanished pensions school systems
in disrepair free trade rising unemployment unpaid
medical bills school debt car debt debt debt.

White is living its brick-and-mortar loss,
staving off more loss, exhaustion, aggrieved
exposure, a pale heart even as in daylight
white hardens its features. Eyes, which hold all
the light, harden. Jaws, which close down on nothing,
harden. Hands, which assembled, and packaged,
and built, harden into a fury that cannot call

power to account though it’s not untrue jobs were
outsourced and it’s not untrue an economic base
was cut out from under. It’s not untrue.

If people could just come clean about their pain,
the being at a loss when just being white
is not working. Who said there is no hierarchy
inside white walls? Who implied white owns
everything even as it owns nothing? But white
can’t strike its own structure. White can’t oust
its own system. All the loss is nothing
next to any other who can be thrown out.
In daylight this right to righteous rage doubles
down the supremacy of white in this way.






I'm Learning Nothing This Night                         Reginald Dwayne Betts


The magazine on my lap talks
about milk. Tells me that in America,
every farmer lost money on
every cow, every day of every month
of the year. Imagine that? To wake
up and know you're digging yourself
deeper into a hole you can't see
out of, even as your hands are wet
with what feeds you. That's how this
thing is, holding on & losing a little each
moment. I'm whispering an invented
history to myself tonight– because
letting go is the art of living fully
in the world your body creates
when you sleep. Say a prayer for
the insomniacs. They hunger &
demand the impossible. Pray for
the farmers, hands deep in loam-
body's weight believing what
the mind knows is ruin, they too
want the impossible, so accustomed
to the earth responding when they call.

In case you wondered …

…Paul Davis On Crime: Menefreghismo: Just How Good a Singer Was Dean Martin?


I think he was a great singer.

Something to think on …

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

— Irwin Shaw, who died on this date in 1984

Taking texts at their word …

… Beyond the Cross | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…Conservatives tend to see individual decisions as more consequential (abortion and sexual license on the negative side, free market decision-making on the positive), whereas liberals, concerned primarily with corporate life, feel that an excessive concern with the individual leads inexorably to lassitude and injustice in the political sphere. There is truth in both outlooks and both critiques, but if we confine ourselves to the biblical worldview, it is not unfair to put it in the form of a question: Was the Son of God immolated on the cross for my sins or for America's?

Blogging note …

I just received some unsettling news. So blogging may be light  today.

Underrated …

… Whatever next? How plot grips us, from Dickens to Line of Duty | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

As the late Aristotle put it, "Plot is the soul of the drama." By which he meant its substantial form.

Inquirer reviews …

… including one by me:

… 'John Quincy Adams': Workmanlike bio of a prickly, embattled political life.

… I take a look at Dawn Manning's 'Postcards': Exquisite tanka, concise, crystalline.

… Pulitzer-winning 'Sympathizer' wins Edgar Award — but is it really crime fiction?

… 'Summer Before the War': Plenty of ambience, but slow.

My Peace I Give You

Too Many...Things!  Invading

Me!      Peace Be With You

Even The Lord Took A Day

Simply listen to the birds

To the wind singing

To Sun Glorious Sunday

Something to think on …

They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.

— Emily Dickinson, who died on this date in 1886

Hmm …

… The Ernest Hemingway Blog: "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" -- the ineffable horror.

Sweet …

My friend Wendy sent me this email and I asked her if I could post it and she said I could. So here it is.

So, I'm a sub for the after-school program.  Basically, I'm to keep track of a bunch of youngsters while they occupy themselves between school and the time a parent picks them up.  I tend to bring stuff to do and they know this.  They like the telephone wire and frequently ask me to make animals for them.  I'm conscious of not wanting to waste the wire because I don't know how I'll get any more (what I have was a present from the park), so that day, I told the children who asked for wire that they could make anything they wanted as long as it could be worn on the head.  There were a few who questioned the limitation, and I said it was a challenge, that there were all sorts of ways to decorate the head or attach something to the head.  Several crowns were started immediately.  Aerawen, dear 3rd grade (she's the first one in the alphabet poem) straight-shooter who knows her own mind and doesn't mind that hers is a little different, didn't like the limitation.  She asked over and over why it had to be that way and sincerely conveyed how much she didn't like it.  She wanted to make a bracelet, and then a cat, and then back to a bracelet.  I suggested there were lots of ways to make what she wanted and rig up something so she could wear it on her head, then take that thing away later.  It was just a challenge.  She was still dissatisfied.  A little while later, I spied Aerawen with a piece of wire, making conjoined circles, and pretty soon I recognized a pair of spectacles.  She then asked for my help fashioning lightning bolts that were to cross the lens area of the spectacles and explained why:  "Those lightning bolts," she said, "are to show how angry I am that I have to make something that goes on my head." I helped her make them and she went away happy.  Aerawen is a wonderful being.  I want to see her grow up.

Good luck with this one …

… This professor has predicted every presidential election since 1984. He’s still trying to figure out 2016. - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In verse …

… Letter to the Editor - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Revealed …

… The Secrets of Medieval Fonts | medievalbooks. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

And some other collections as well …

… Rita Dove’s essential new ‘Collected Poems: 1974-2004’ - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden. )

Q&A …

… Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 45 (Continued), John Steinbeck. (Hat tip, David Tothero.)

            To finish is sadness to a writer—a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

Dragon's gold …

… Zealotry of Guerin: Siegfried Tastes the Dragon's Blood (Arthur Rackham), Sonnet #297.

The libertarian default …

… Overcoming Bias : Why I Lean Libertarian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

"Books We Are Thankful For"

From the librarians at the New York Public Library

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue

Adrian Lester returns to the role of Hamlet and Roger Allam takes on King Lear for the first time in a major new series of Guardian videos, launched today. Shakespeare Solos, a project to mark the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death, brings together a lineup of outstanding actors who each perform a key speech from the plays.

Something to think on …

If we want the perfect host to take us into his eternal home when we come to knock at his door, he has told us himself what we have to do: we must be ready to open our own door to the earthly guests that come our way.

— Jean Daniélou, born on this date in 1905

The line towards dust …

… First Known When Lost: Change.

Another legend bites the dust …

… Dylan Thomas was a 'shy and retiring' poet who could only drink four pints, his GP's memoir reveals.

If You're in Amherst...

...Check out the lost gardens of Emily Dickinson

Shrewder than most …

… Tom Wolfe’s View of Trump | The American Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In case you wondered …

… Friday the 13th: Where does it come from and why are we still so superstitious about the 'unluckiest' day? | Home News | News | The Independent.

One-man avant garde …

… Anton Chekhov: A Post-Modernist Way Ahead of His Time | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

It is hard to believe that much of what Chekhov was publishing during this time was written some 30 years before Dada and the other experimental movements of the early 20th century. His story “Dirty Tragedians and Leprous Playwrights” is written in the form of a short play and is set in the crater of an active volcano, one of the characters being “Tarnovsky: a playwright who is on nodding terms with devils, whales, and crocodiles; has a pulse of 225, and a temperature of 109.4,” another character being: “Charles XII: King of Sweden; has all the polish and charm of a Tatar longshoreman.”

Inspiration …

… Paul Davis On Crime: The True Story Of The Booze, Bullfights, And Brawls That Inspired Ernest Hemingway’s 'The Sun Also Rises".

Alternative canon…

… Mortals Listening to Mortals - Washington Free Beacon. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… While there is no denying the greatness of Shakespeare and Donne, they were great not because they incorporated the Petrarchan style, but because they reined in its excesses, and re-introduced elements of the earlier, simpler verse that the Petrarchans had displaced in fashionable circles. This style, which Williams somewhat confusingly calls the “Native” school (confusing because, if you go back far enough, the Latinate forms and rhetorical strategies of the school were hardly English) was itself a period of poetic greatness; the Petrarchans were not the beginning of modern English poetry, but merely a bridge between an earlier major school and the greats of the next century.

Join in the discussion …

… The Ernest Hemingway Blog: An invitation to read Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and an "Introduction to Why I Read Ernest Hemingway's Stories, Novels, and Nonfiction".

Hey, he's pretyy good …

… Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Modernist Poem The Waste Land | Open Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



Somebody ought to get Bob to record an album of poetry.

Harper Lee and the Feds …

… What Two Forgotten Pieces Tell Us About Harper Lee - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Something to think on …

Oh, this terrible second me, always seated whilst the other is on foot, acting, living, suffering, bestirring itself. This second me that I have never been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or put to sleep. And how it sees into things, and how it mocks!

— Alphonse Daudet, born on this date in 1840

Six words or less, or the most laconic post ever...

"For sale: Baby shoes.  Never worn."  is attributed to Hemingway.

Two words from the Bible: "Jesus wept."

---

pace Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes. One used."

pace the Bible: "Jesus laughed."

Others?  Comments below...

Short Fiction!

A couple of handy book rules normally hold true. Avoid gimmick books—holiday anthologies, blog-to-print money grabs, any deep dive into a flaky food subject like the kumquat or the persimmon. And, most of the time, avoid books that fit into your back pocket—slight often means slight. “Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer,” edited by Robert Swartwood, is on the wrong side of both of these rules, yet it’s an interesting, often thrilling collection, not because it rewards our shrinking attention spans, but because the best of these stories transcend the gimmick and are complete, elegant moments of fiction.

Flash Fiction Contest!

By way of Paperback Writer

Shill alert …

… Bill Nye Is A Huckster.

If there is any specific kind of person you don't want to be governed by, it would be a mechanical engineer, especially one impersonating a scientist.

Doing the work …

… Get Back In The Kitchen | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Good for him …

… I'm a Professor Who Doesn't Use Trigger Warnings. Here's Why. - Reason.com.

The benefits of letting students experience literature for themselves in this way were demonstrated during a recent class discussion. My students had read Planet of the Apes (also known as Monkey Planet), the 1963 novel by French author Pierre Boulle that inspired the movies. A suspenseful satire, it’s an easy, fun read despite some disturbing content. The only introductory note I provided to my students was that they might look for connections between the book and Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels, which we read the week before. I conducted class as I often do, asking students to point out scenes, sentences, or details they wanted to discuss and letting the conversation go where it may. A student volunteered. She had found the behavior of the book’s protagonist-narrator, Ulysse, toward the female love interest, Nova, to be “very disturbing.” 

This is wonderful demonstration of what authentic teaching is all about.

Sounds good …

… Minnesota Faculty Senate ponders policy making free speech 'paramount'.

FYI …

… Boulevard.

I have a longish poem in the latest issue of Boulevard and also make a contribution to the issue's symposium. There is also a story by Joyce Carol Oates and a couple of poems by my friend Miriam Kotzin, along with many other goodies.

God's work...

...The Sisters who treat the untreatable

In case you wondered …

… Dana Gioia Why Poetry Matters | Video | C-SPAN.org. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

And the winners are …

… Winning Poems for2016 April : IBPC.

… The Judge's Page.

(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Very informative …

… Mother Teresa's Worlds :: Center for Islamic Pluralism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

For believers, affirmation of ­Mother Teresa's activities and miracles will suffice for her sainthood. But in taking the full measure of her commitment to the divine, we should go further back in time, long before she won the admiration of the world starting in the 1960s. The details of her early life are little known, but they offer several clues as to why this humble nun turned into an international figure of faith and love.

Much in what he says …

… Taking counsel of my fears | Brandywine Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

We’re no longer the “moral and religious” people John Adams declared the Constitution to be designed for. We are those people’s degenerate descendants, too selfish and lazy to sustain a republic.

I fear so.

A favorite …

… The Ernest Hemingway Blog: "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway.

Another college worth skipping …

… Springfield College Purges Men in Literature | National Association of Scholars.

Something to think on …

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

— Jiddu Krishnamurti, born on this date in 1895

A tyrant's ways …

… The Power Broker (Modern Library Nonfiction #92) | Reluctant Habits.

The joke the Ivy League has become …

… Harvard’s clueless illiberalism - The Washington Post.

Merciless ridicule is what they deserve.

The Catholic Writers Guild

for writers and others "loyal to the Magisterium" and about "The rebirth of Catholic Arts and Letters."  The associated blog, which seems more lively, is here.

But the Science was Settled!

An analysis of scientific reports and comments on the health effects of a salty diet reveals a polarization between those supportive of the hypothesis that population-wide reduction of salt intake is associated with better health and those that were not. In all, 54 percent were supportive of the hypothesis; 33 percent, not supportive; and 13 percent inconclusive.

The work of it …

… Poetry [by Jay Parini] - The Best American Poetry. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Our fallen state …

… The Writers' Almanac: Flannery O'Connor on the loss of innocence and on the reality of evil.

Mark thy calendar …

NEW BOOK PARTY + MOVIE PREMIERE
PLEASE COME AND CELEBRATE THE PUBLICATION OF
LEONARD GONTAREK’S NEW BOOK OF POEMS,
TAKE YOUR HAND OUT OF MY POCKET, SHIVA,

AND THE PHILADELPHIA PREMIERE OF
14 PHOTOS FROM THE BRIDGE, THE AWARD-WINNING SHORT FILM
BASED ON HIS POEM, SPONSORED BY MOTIONPOEMS
AND THE WEISMAN ART MUSEUM

SIGNING & READING, WITH GUEST READERS

SEMI-FORMAL (OPTIONAL)

POPCORN WILL BE PROVIDED

FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 6 PM
PENN BOOKSTORE
3601 WALNUT STREET
PHILADELPHIA PA
(On the University of
Pennsylvania Campus)


TAKE YOUR HAND OUT OF MY POCKET, SHIVA (HANGING LOOSE PRESS)

“This is a book of human hungers so exact in its recognitions it leaves a reader stricken with a sense not just of how detailed our desires are, but how rare it is to have them articulated in ways yet unspoken. 'In my poor country, we poured sugar/ on everything to not notice our hunger,' Leonard Gontarek writes, but where that coat of sweetening fails, this poet stays to record what is still needed, what is still hungry, what is still so very, and beautifully, human.”

—Katie Ford, author of Blood Lyrics and Colosseum

Three lives, many letters …

… The Mysterious Letter Writer Who Beguiled Flannery O’Connor and Iris Murdoch - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… this was Hazel Elizabeth Hester, a file clerk at Atlanta’s Retail Credit Company, now the credit-reporting giant Equifax. Murdoch and Hester, who called herself Betty, corresponded for more than thirty years, until the onset of Alzheimer’s disease made it impossible for Murdoch to reply. Even then, John Bayley, Murdoch’s husband, asked Hester to continue. “She loveshearing from you,” Bayley wrote Hester in January, 1997, “and she sends loving greeting. Please go on writing to her because it means a lot to her—a really very great deal.”

Something to think on …

A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know that he sees it.

— William Dean Howells, who died on this date in 1920

Howard Jacobson

It was with considerable excitement that I approached Howard Jacobson's Finkler Question. And I'm pleased to report, the book did not let me down. In fact, it's up there now as one of my favorites. 

Part of what I liked so much about Jacobson's novel was its honesty: Finkler gets at a range of topics, all of them awkward, all of them charged. 

Contrary to what you'll read on its back cover (by critics who seem to have missed the point), Finker is about far more than generic themes of friendship and belonging, identity and loss. To argue that the book is about these things is to deliberately avoid its aim, or to feel some sort of discomfort discussing it. 

Finkler is about being Jewish. It's about using that word 'Jew' in contemporary Europe. It's a book about anti-Semitism and its roots, and about the Holocaust. It's a book, too, about Jewish guilt, and about Jewish humor. It's a book about living on the fringes of European society, but also very much at its core. And finally, it's a book about the Middle East, and about the complexity of Israeli politics.

For me, Finkler was reminiscent of one of my favorite Roth novels, The Counterlife (which also takes place in London). Like Roth, Jacobson deals head on with British conceptions of Jewry, and with the role of Jews in contemporary European society. 

I think Jacobson, though, is more accessible than Roth, and Finkler serves as a courageous, unwavering vision of Judaism from all angles: from inside and out, from places of hatred and honor, from across Europe to the Middle East and beyond. 

I can't recommend Finkler enough: here's a funny, poignant, compelling depiction of European Jewry, and all of the charged political and religious baggage that comes along with it. 

The last word is reserved for Jacobson:

"The Holocaust has become a commodity you trade. There's a Spanish mayor who's cancelled his town's Holocaust Memorial Day because of Gaza, as though they're somehow connected..."

"...I know. The implication being that the dead of Buchenwald only get to be memorialised if the living of Tel Aviv behave themselves."

At all turns, Finkler poses these sorts of, well, you guessed it - these sorts of questions.

Little Libraries

"Little Free Library is about readers inspiring readers inspiring readers. It goes on and on.”

Neglected poets...

Asked to name that book published in the last quarter of a century that she believed to have been the most undeservedly neglected for an American Scholarfeature on “Neglected Books of the Past 25 Years,”, Louise Bogan, in one of her last letters, nominated “the poetry of Abbie Huston Evans.” Chances are few of The American Scholar’s readers recognized Evan’s name. Chances are even fewer of today’s readers would.

Q&A …

… Interview: Pulitzer Winner Balakian’s World of Poetry | Armenian Weekly. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)

I write—and here I’m just playing with your idea of the word “raw”—in a very sharp, sensuous language that can be elliptical. I’m interested in capturing the tense nerve ends of syntax. Every line and phrase is a highly transformed act. It is a transformed and compressed piece of language. Every poem goes through 50 to 100 drafts. That’s what poets do; we’re obsessed with phrases and the nuances of linguistic music. If the reader thinks it flows, that means we succeeded [chuckles]. The intensity of compression and the decisions about where to cut, tweak, and move a phrase or an image are fundamental issues for a poet. Anyway, because you used the word “raw,” I wanted to note how much intense revising goes into making the “raw” [laughs]. I also hope readers realize poetry is about language and language is a modality of discovery, and the nuances of meaning are inseparable from the language density and inventions that a poet makes.

A young curmudgeon …

… MEISEL | No More National Poetry Month | The Cornell Daily Sun. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)



Sounds a little like me at that age.

And it's sound advice…

… Advice to poets: get out of the ivory tower | PBS NewsHour. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)

Living faith …

… The Writers' Almanac: Flannery O'Connor on her faith, on the mystery of God, and the force of death.

"In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber."

Q&A …

… The Most Beautiful Illusion - Daniel Kalder interviews Alejandro Jodorowsky — Los Angeles Review of Books.

Eastern religions say: “Life is an illusion.” Now if life is an illusion, I will live the most beautiful illusion. I will suffer a beautiful illusion. Why suffer an ugly illusion, a terrible illusion? I started to make art, all the time thinking of healing the person who reads me, to give to that person an image of what she really is.

Listen in …

… Episode 167 – John Holl | Virtual Memories.

“I really think New Jersey has the most diverse food culture around.”