From the category archives:

Music

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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As If She Were a Symbol of Something

Thumbnail image for As If She Were a Symbol of Something March 17, 2010

Before I post my regularly scheduled post, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I give you an excerpt from James Joyce’s “The Dead.”

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To Make Bach the Grund of Grundrisse and the Chaconne of a Shocked Shack

Thumbnail image for To Make Bach the Grund of Grundrisse and the Chaconne of a Shocked Shack March 15, 2010

Today I thought I should add my secret voice to your evaluations.
Your intelligence may be genius, but remember as my mother saids also always to be nice.
A seventh grade teacher consoled me when I was teased:
You can always tell the genius by the enemies who surround him.

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Thumbnail image for An Annotated ‘Some Enchanted Evening’

An Annotated ‘Some Enchanted Evening’

March 12, 2010

I recommend playing all the videos at the same time.

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that gum you like is going to come back in style

March 10, 2010

With the creation of one of the high achievements of mankind, Twin Peaks, David Lynch made a world so ecstatic it demanded its own reality. I’ve been really thinking about Julee Cruise and Twin Peaks SO MUCH lately. What makes it so good? Where did this music come from? Who is Julee Cruise *really*!?

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Blogging through Grossman, Part 3: Poetic Promiscuity.

Thumbnail image for Blogging through Grossman, Part 3: Poetic Promiscuity. March 2, 2010

We recent poets have two great tools at our disposal: freedom of poetic license, and freedom of publishing. Generally, we can say whatever we want, and get a significant number of people to hear what we have to say. The question is whether this freedom has led to better poetry or degeneration. Perhaps that’s not the best way to put it. The question should be, even if somebody is doing something amazing and new in poetry, would we even see it? Will we travel all this way to find that we really did need the gatekeepers of poetry??

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The Lyric Workshop, Session 1: Theme From Shaft

Thumbnail image for The Lyric Workshop, Session 1: Theme From Shaft February 24, 2010

PROFESSOR: Mary Ann, would you mind reading your poem aloud so that we can hear it in your own voice?

MARY ANN: Absolutely. Ahem.

Who’s the black private dick
That’s a sex machine to all the chicks?
SHAFT!
Ya damn right!

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Tangent

February 17, 2010

On fourth of July, alone in my kitchen and the sound of distant fireworks. I drink cheap Merlot, watch the dark break and enter through the windows. I am all over the Internet, but would rather be all over someone else: a tangent. A tanager. Today, by the river I saw a scarlet tanager. Had [...]

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Alexander McQueen, RIP

Thumbnail image for Alexander McQueen, RIP February 11, 2010

I’m don’t consider myself a comfortable elegist (is anyone?), but reading of Alexander McQueen’s death this morning forces me to take up the mantle. I’m not a huge fashion-buff, but I made the walk past the McQueen store on 14th Street a highlight of my daily commute when I worked in Chelsea. His clothes seemed [...]

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