From the category archives:

Animals

Herman Melville Drinks Your Milkshake

Thumbnail image for Herman Melville Drinks Your Milkshake May 13, 2010

I was fortunate enough to have a American Literature professor who blew off the typical survey class BS and just gave us some of the best literature of the 19th century: Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville, among others… In that class, I read Moby-Dick for the first time. I believe I read most of it over the course [...]

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Ain’t No Sunshine in My Shell

Thumbnail image for Ain’t No Sunshine in My Shell March 28, 2010

I’m currently in a class concerning Animal Studies in the Comparative Literature Department in which the word “anthropomorphism” is a swear word. The argument is that anthropomorphism is anthropocentric, and thereby undermines the possibilities of the animal’s consciousness by placing the human in a superior (and dominating) role. It should be noted that while I think this all well-argued and slightly interesting, when it comes to poetry—it’s a large load of nonsense. We’d have to knock out some pretty significant poems in our extended canon were we to castigate anthropomorphism the way they are proposing. At least for me, and for a long trailing history of ancestor poets behind me, anthropomorphism is the stuff I (we) live for. And if it’s a profane thing, then @#*& you, Comp Lit people. (It should also be noted I am the only poet in that class, and I am looked at at least twice during every session as if I were a really cool but leggy and crawly beetle that you’re grossed out by but can’t look away from.)

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NOTES ON NOISE

Thumbnail image for NOTES ON NOISE March 24, 2010

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share…
-Paul Simon

Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds….
-Vladimir Nabokov

To my wife Anne, without whose silence this book never would have been written.
-Philip K. Dick, dedication page from The Man in the High Castle

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“Hour” by Christian Hawkey with drawings

Thumbnail image for “Hour” by Christian Hawkey with drawings March 23, 2010
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Sometimes when I happy get

Thumbnail image for Sometimes when I happy get March 18, 2010

Sometimes when I happy get I turn on my television set

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Big Sur, Elephant Seals, Hector Viel Temperley

March 5, 2010
Thumbnail image for Big Sur, Elephant Seals, Hector Viel Temperley

When you drive south through Big Sur, you must stop and see the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas. There were huge males on the beach on Tuesday, maybe 15 feet long, with doe-like black eyes and crumpled snouts that look like a baby bird has perched on their faces.

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