Society

Terms, Truth, Sun Sparrows: A Very Important Lesson from My Father

by Joe Weil March 1, 2011 Academia

I received a very important lesson from my father. We were driving around in the part of New Jersey he grew up in–a once rural area called Chester that was now suburban. He was sad because the street he had lived on so many years before was much smaller in reality than in memory and [...]

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Marriage Counseling for True Minds

by Alfred Corn February 1, 2011 Academia

Don Paterson, the leading contemporary Scottish poet, throughout this book cites previous critical studies of the Sonnets (especially those written by Stephen Booth and Helen Vendler), but when he does it’s almost always to differ from them. Did he expect to get applause or even grudging acceptance from literary scholars? I’m not sure. To the [...]

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Unstuck with Yahia Lababidi

by Brian Chappell January 1, 2011 Academia

Yahia Lababidi remembers late nights in his dorm room at George Washington University, tossing in bed as the voices of Wilde, Rilke and Kafka reverberated around him. Words or phrases, even the tiniest snippets of philosophy, would teem, pulse and swirl to a boiling point, until he could no longer resist formulating his own response, [...]

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Literary Movements: Insider as Outsider and Token Renegade

by Joe Weil December 29, 2010 Academia

When gaining a foothold among the establishment, it is important the so called “outsiders” or mavericks have a figure fully anchored within the establishment who can be “acceptable” to the degree that he is: 1. Friendly to their cause, or, at the least, suffers their presence gladly. 2. Perceives himself (or herself) as being “forward [...]

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Gatekeepers of Literary Greatness: Some Definitions and a Parable about Chickens

by Joe Weil December 15, 2010 Academia

In the interest of clarity, we will be using terms I’ve either borrowed or made up as a sort of “jargon” by which to navigate this series of essays. The first of these are the ten forms of “value.’ These are values by which cannons and books enter the world of letters. I name them: [...]

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Gatekeepers of Literary Greatness

by Joe Weil December 8, 2010 Academia

I am excited about the prospect of teaching a course in which students will be given an opportunity to dismantle certain suppositions, while at the same time studying the mechanisms of dismantling which we call literary movements, and literary greatness. First, what is a gatekeeper? What gate does he keep? And what is the literary [...]

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What I Learned in School This Year

by Brian Chappell November 21, 2010 Academia

Why did I – why do we – get into this profession? It’s hard to remember. Maybe they want us to forget. But how could I? Late nights with Dostoevsky, The Tempest at the Globe, Gravity’s Rainbow pre-dawn on the Metro. In a word, love. Or perhaps another, vocation. A few weeks ago I was [...]

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On Gene Tanta’s “Critical Introduction to Unusual Woods.”

by Brooks Lampe October 30, 2010 Academia

Gene Tanta begins his first book of poems, Unusual Woods, with a 20-page essay that takes shots at T.S. Eliot, Harold Bloom and others. Why does he do this and what is he trying to say? Surrealism and one of its American progeny, , have never been fully accepted. Their stock has taken a dip [...]

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Joe Weil’s Must Have Books (Towards a Different Kind of Workshop, Part II)

by Joe Weil October 23, 2010 Academia

NOTE: This is the 2nd part in Joe”s series about poetry workshops. The first part can be found here. Some days in a writing workshop should be like rainy days with a coloring book. In that case, I might let my students just talk and read, or sketch. At arts high, when I thought a [...]

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Is Democracy Incompatible with the Humanities?

by Micah Towery October 1, 2010 Academia

In a recent blog post, and takes George Philip, president of SUNY-Albany, to task for axing the French, Italian, classics, Russian, and theater programs. Fish claims it is the job of presidents and chancellors to proclaim the value of liberal arts education loudly and often and at least try to make the powers that be [...]

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Do Movie Critics Matter?

by Micah Towery March 25, 2010 Aesthetics

comments on : Journalistic standards have changed so drastically that, when I took the podium at the film circle’s dinner and quoted Pauline Kael’s 1974 alarm, “Criticism is all that stands between the public and advertising,” the gala’s audience responded with an audible hush—not applause. Over recent years, film journalism has—perhaps unconsciously—been considered a part [...]

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Waverly Gate

by Sarah V. Schweig March 10, 2010 Academia

Life consists of propositions about life. —Wallace Stevens I. A certain esteemed professor requires that those enrolled in his poetry workshop meet with him in his downtown studio apartment, right off Washington Square. Once inside, the student hands over a few poems and watches the professor–clipboard in one hand, red pen in the other–scrutinize every [...]

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