From the category archives:

Literary Criticism

Thoughts on “Mock Orange” and Minimalism

by Micah Towery July 14, 2010 Literary Criticism

I hope you’ve been watching . It’s the perfect-sized portion of poetry and comment to get you thinking, your poetry juices flowing. Mary Karr is also a great reader/interpreter of the various poems. I just watched Episode 5 on Louise Gluck’s poem “Mock Orange.” I don’t often remember my first encounter with a poem or [...]

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“Minor” Poets and Imagery

by Joe Weil July 13, 2010 Literary Criticism

I spoke of ontology before, the significance of being that stems from a poem, but there are minor poems, small triumphs of imagery, of rhythm, or beauty that make us think: “Why am I so concerned with truth or significance? Right now, my lover is asleep, and the venetian blinds are leaving their shadow across [...]

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More about McLuhan and the Poetic Line

by Micah Towery July 1, 2010 Literary Criticism

In a recent post, I based a discussion about the relationship between the poetic line and print culture on some of Marshall McLuhan’s ideas. I was recently listening to the below lecture by McLuhan and he discussed the effects of the phonetic alphabet. He said that the phonetic alphabet divorced the visual sense from the [...]

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Print and Rhyme

by Micah Towery June 24, 2010 Literary Criticism

I’ve been reading a lot of Marshall McLuhan in the last several months. I know he’s not the most fashionable critic anymore, but I admire his attitude toward culture. I’ve heard some call him a “futurist” but this seems to run directly counter to McLuhan as I read him. If anything, McLuhan is a medievalist [...]

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Hamlet and his (Public) Problems

by Micah Towery May 28, 2010 Art

has an excellent radio show called , which is surprisingly high brow stuff. In particular, Ideas has been running a series based on . has been tracing for listeners the origin of the modern public. It’s worth listening to from the beginning, but if you’re short on time, the last three episodes on Dutch painting, [...]

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Excerpt from The Book of Tea: “V. Art Appreciation”

by Micah Towery May 14, 2010 Aesthetics

V. Art Appreciation Have you heard the Taoist tale of the Taming of the Harp? Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine of Lungmen stood a Kiri tree, a veritable king of the forest. It reared its head to talk to the stars; its roots struck deep into the earth, mingling their bronzed coils [...]

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Imitation/Interaction: the Greek Anthology, Augustine, the Psalms

by Micah Towery April 28, 2010 Academia

I want to do a bit of a meditation on the nature of voice and how the self is written into a poem. When I first read Augustine’s Confessions, I felt I had discovered one of the hidden hinges of the modern “voice.” I was familiar with classical writing, and the coldness of the speaking [...]

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Incantations: Michael S. Harper, A Love Supreme

by Micah Towery April 13, 2010 African American

NOTE: In lieu of Grossman today, I’m posting a short essay I wrote on Michael S. Harper’s poem for one of my classes back at . Listen to the following as you read: It is almost impossible to read Michael S. Harper and not feel as though you are missing out on some sort of [...]

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Closing a Poem (Blogging through Grossman, Part 6)

by Micah Towery April 6, 2010 Art

How do you know when you’re “done” a poem? I’m not speaking about revision, but rather, the act of writing, particularly lyrical free verse. Donna Masini once described it to me (or a class I was in—can’t remember which), as a settling in the body: a literal sense in the poet’s body that there is [...]

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Immortality (Blogging through Grossman, Part 4)

by Micah Towery March 23, 2010 Art

I’ve decided to change my strategy for blogging through Grossman. Not only is it almost impossible to try and successfully capture the first part of the book in any systematic way (the conversation shifts too rapidly and it’s almost maddening to trace any idea), but the second part is so lovely and systematically broken down, [...]

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