From the category archives:

Poets & Writers

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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And the James Patterson of Contemporary Poetry is…

by Evan Hansen May 23, 2010 Bob Hicok

Writers in the scattered nation of good poetry are, in general, perfectionists. Many greats have been known to be tight-lipped about their process and to publish only what they deem categorically best. , on the other hand, doesn’t seem worried about perfection. He publishes so prodigiously that it’s hard to imagine he spends any time [...]

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Herman Melville Drinks Your Milkshake

by Micah Towery May 13, 2010 Academia

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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“While I was masturbating, more rainforest disappeared”

by Evan Hansen May 2, 2010 Aaron Kunin

In a poem called “Life,” which appears in his most recent collection, (Pitt Poetry, 2010), writes: “The feeling that mysticism / is the only way to be polite…. / While I was masturbating, / more rainforest / disappeared….” These disclosures feel true—and inevitable, given what at least I believe about climate change and humans continuing [...]

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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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Anton Chekhov’s Letter to Dmitry V. Grigorovich

by Sarah V. Schweig April 21, 2010 Anton Chekhov

(The elderly novelist to whom this letter is addressed won his reputation in the middle of the century and was thus a survivor of the Golden Age of Russian literature. He had written to young Chekhov, with whom he was not acquainted, hailing him as the outstanding writer of his generation and urging him to [...]

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Terrible Eyes: On a Newly Discovered Photograph of Arthur Rimbaud

by Adam Fitzgerald April 18, 2010 Photography

Seen above, for the first time, is a newly-discovered photograph of Arthur Rimbaud from the 1880s. I quote from the Associated Foreign Press: Unseen photo of French poet Rimbaud unveiled PARIS — A previously unseen photo of French poet Arthur Rimbaud was unveiled in Paris on Thursday, bringing the total number of known images of [...]

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Like Tennyson

by Alina Gregorian April 17, 2010 Alfred Lord Tennyson

V. I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I’ll [...]

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All the People of the Universe (An interview with Dorothea Lasky)

by Ben Fama April 16, 2010 Dorothea Lasky

(To sum up our tryptych of posts for Dorothea Lasky, I present a brief and delicious interview) It seems like some of the best writing that’s happening right now is coming out of the Amherst/ Northampton area. I’m thinking of Natalie Lyalin, Heather Christle, Emily Pettit. Matthew Zapruder went to school there. So did you. [...]

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Some Sort of Truth: Dorothea Lasky’s BLACK LIFE Hurts Like Joy

by Lonely Christopher April 15, 2010 Dorothea Lasky

Dorothea Lasky is a poet of petulant grace. The particular way she does is she carves into the alphabet for poetry’s hurtfully buried, metastasized epiphanies of black life. Thence comes the fragments of jagged wonder she strings together to decorate her verse with pretty conflict. Her wonder (love and awe) is heavy and plain, stilted [...]

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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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Dorothea Lasky’s POETRY IS NOT A PROJECT or Cutting More Lines in the Cosmic Divide

by Ben Fama April 13, 2010 Art

Dorothea Lasky’s made huge waves when debuted at this years AWP. The newest book on ‘s Dossier imprint, Lasky lays out, in 19 quick pages, a theory of poetry that reaches back through High Romanticism into a more hermetic time. Illustrated beautiful throughout by , Lasky’s theory pushes against the limits set out by conceptual [...]

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“Hour” by Christian Hawkey with drawings

by Simone Kearney March 23, 2010 Art
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To Make Bach the Grund of Grundrisse and the Chaconne of a Shocked Shack

by David Shapiro March 1, 2010 Aesthetics

Today I thought I should add my secret voice to your evaluations. Your intelligence may be genius, but remember as my mother said also always be nice. A seventh grade teacher consoled me when I was teased: You can always tell the genius by the enemies who surround him. Try, though it’s impossible. See JA. [...]

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A Cuban Sandwich and Levinas

by Joe Weil February 23, 2010 Fashion

Suppose you are reading Levinas, having a nice Cuban sandwich, minding your business, thinking about the self, the other, the other self, the otherness of self, the selfishness of other, etc, etc, and the sun slants across the legs of a woman you pretend to have a deep rapport with—striping them apricot. What do you [...]

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12 February 2010

by Alina Gregorian February 12, 2010 Franz Kafka

I am happy to be posting on an even-numbered day in an even-numbered month in an even-numbered year. Give It Up! It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was on my way to the station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized it was much [...]

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