Ezra Pound

Big Time Sensuality: Jack Gilbert

by Karl Wolff September 17, 2012 Poetry and Poetics

Naked Except for the Jewelry “And,” she said, “you must talk no more about ecstasy. It is a loneliness.” The woman wandered about picking up her shoes and silks. “You said you loved me,” the man said. “We tell lies,” she said, brushing her wonderful hair, naked except for the jewelry. “We try to believe.” [...]

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Why E-books are not Books (and will probably change publishing)

by Micah Towery October 24, 2011 Society

1. The traditional book was based on a form that needed capital, influence, etc. This meant that gatekeepers were required. Getting through the gates endowed an author with certain benefits: editing, layout, publicity, and—perhaps most important—legitimacy. a. The system inevitably mistakes its own guardians of capital for guardians of true literary value. Certainly these interests [...]

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Hindu Surrealism: George Kalamaras

by Brooks Lampe June 22, 2011 Poetry and Poetics

The two loves of Kalamaras’s life: Surrealism and Hindu mysticism (with a touch of rhetorical theory!). A serious look at his work would address how his poetry investigates the intriguing parallels between surrealism and Eastern mysticism, a relationship already hinted at in the origins of Pound’s ideogrammic method, which became the basis of the modernist [...]

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Frank Bidart’s “Golden State”: Resisting the Diachronic Urge

by Brooks Lampe March 25, 2011 Poetry and Poetics

Galen Strawson, in his essay, “Against Narrativity,” challenges the validity of the popularly held hypothesis that human beings experience and make sense of their lives as narratives. The effects of narrative self-articulation, he says, are “potentially pernicious.” The predisposition “to look for story or narrative coherence in one’s life is, in general, a gross hindrance [...]

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How Tu Fu Works

by Micah Towery March 11, 2011 Aesthetics

I’ve been enjoying Kenneth Rexroth’s Classics Revisited lately (You can find ). Rexroth’s literary polymathism—his ability to speak (and translate) almost anything—seems touched only by Ezra Pound (who was a great translator, but not a good one). Rexroth’s admiration for Tu Fu as a poet (along with Joe Weil’s recommended book list) inspired me to [...]

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Voices of the Fourth Generation

by Jonathan Wei March 8, 2011 Poetry and Poetics

Unlike the anthologies of traditional Chinese poetry translated by Burton Watson and Stephen Owen, , compiled and translated by Keming Liu and some other writers and poets, is in bilingual format for the first time. The collection aims at “the attention of English-speaking readers a comprehensive and focused selection of contemporary Chinese poetry in translation.” [...]

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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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More Construction Notes

by migration_test October 14, 2010 Academia

Just a few things to notice about the site redesign. 1. You can now login and comment with your Twitter, Facebook, Open ID, Yahoo, or many other accounts. In the process of this changeover, the old comments have disappeared. Fear not! They are not lost. We’re just in the process of importing them, and barring [...]

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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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Towards A Theoria, Praxis, and Poesis of Modernist/Post Modernist Poetry (A Procedural)

by Joe Weil June 28, 2010 Poetry and Poetics

Preamble of questions Is there such a thing as “poetic language?” For example, which of the following words are poetic: Splat, emptiness, selvage, corporatization, loom, sequester, actually, rooster, surmise, demonstrate, fart, interpretation, destiny, tooth, ineluctable, meme, vector, duplicity, comma, consequence, drive, chant, teeter, tumult, fragrant, flounder, forget, suspend? Pick four words of five words from [...]

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Blogging through Grossman, Part 3: Poetic Promiscuity.

by Micah Towery March 2, 2010 Film

In their second conversation, Mark Halliday and Allen Grossman attempt to answer the question “Where are we now in the history of poetry?” I figured I’d highlight a few of the most interesting takes on poets of the last hundred years. I want to then use it as the basis of a discussion on the [...]

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Some Books on My Mind, or {Potential} Purchases of Imperishables

by Adam Fitzgerald February 21, 2010 Prose

Richard A. Barney (ed.), “David Lynch: Interviews” KM: If your paintings had sound what would it be like? DL: Different paintings would have different sounds. So This is Love would have a muffled sound like talking through a glove. A Bug Dreams would be a really shrill 15,000-cycle piercing sound. She Wasn’t Fooling Anyone, She [...]

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