Nabokov

Sentimentality vs. Feeling

by Joe Weil Aesthetics
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True feeling has the force of grace; sentimentality has the stench of morals. The word “should” and “must” cling to its fat cherubic legs. Half comprised of self regard, and the other half a mixture of cliche, the sentimental is close to the feigned regard of the funeral director: appropriate, and grave, but with one eye on the itemized bill.

Tagged as: Chekov, feeling, Lipa, Madame Bovary, Nabokov, Russian Literature, sentimentality, The Gully, The Ravine, The Sound of Music, Tolstoy

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Empathy, Cultural Dialogue, and Dead White Men

by Brian Chappell Fiction
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“Bloody hell, no! I want to study dead white men!”

Tagged as: aspen institute, azar nafisi, dead white men, empathy, frank mccourt, gabriel garcia marquez, mario vargas llosa, michael dirda, Nabokov, reading lolita in tehran

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Ben Lerner’s “Mean Free Path”

by Evan Hansen Poetry
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What if I made you hear this as music
But not how you mean that. The slow beam
Opened me up. Walls walked through me
Like resonant waves. I thought that maybe
If you aren’t too busy, we could spend our lives
Parting in stations, promising to write
War and Peace, this time with feeling
As bullets leave their luminous traces across
Wait, I wasn’t finished, I was going to say
Breakwaters echo long lines of cloud

Tagged as: Angle of Yaw, Ben Lerner, cola, collage, Copper Canyon Press, Dedication, Doppler, elegy, Iraq, Lichtenberg Figures, Love Poetry, Mean Free Path, Nabokov, Shock and Awe, Spenserian stanzas, U.S. military, war, War and Peace, Zukofsky

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