Al Filreis (Free subscription) | 12/04/2009
I'm listening to a 2-hour recording made of Kenneth Irby reading at the Ear Inn in New York, in May of 1984. At the time he was obsessed with the relatively unknown poetry of Mary Butts . And he began his reading by talking about Butts' writing career, and life, and by reading several of her poems. Along the way Irby mentions that Butts was married to John Rodker . I hadn't known that. I've long been...
Character Sketch (Free subscription) | 12/04/2009
So, I'm reading this man's poetry--one of the seniors I teach in my Wednesday workshop. I have seen his work in class, and I have seen his work in his book. Honestly, I think his work in class is better. I have been making notes: telling him there is too much prose; there needs to be a meaning under the meaning; too many articles; kill the adverbs; say it new. That kind of thing. I want to show this...
Career Limiting Moves (Free subscription) | 12/04/2009
Some time around 8:45 ADT this evening, Site Meter registered the 100,000th hit on this wee blog, a couple months shy of its third birthday. Thanks to all you regular readers. And of course to those seeking "anal moves," "cock and ball stories" and the plagiarists looking for essays on Wallace Stevens. I luvs all of you!
San Fransisco Chronicle (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
The Poetry of Rilke (North Point Press; 684 pages; $50). Ausgezeichnet! ("Magnificent" sounds so less grand.) More than 250 poems from the German master; the culmination of 25 years of work by the translator Edward Snow. Wallace Stevens: Selected Poems (...
Career Limiting Moves (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
Thanks to Brian for pointing out this review , by the ever-controversial often perceptive William Logan, of Wallace Stevens' recent Selected. If this be "snark," then long live snark. In other words, I love critical writing like this, and if you don't, then it's probably because you haven't made adequate efforts to appreciate the critic's intention.
Stick Poet Super Hero (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
This looks really interesting, if anyone is close to Farmington, CT on December 3rd it might be worth taking in. If any readers make it to this, I’d love to hear from them about it. Submitted by Melissa Lamar, Tunxis Community College, on 2009-11-23. The public is invited to attend "Philosophy of the Supreme Fiction: In and Beyond the Metaphysics of Wallace Stevens," a free talk by...
Joe Brainard's Pyjamas (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
and some other book by Shaw. I can't say I'm not tempted to pick it up. Are there pictures? Will it break my heart? Is he still alive? I better not read it. Oh, he's very much alive. I just checked him on Wiki. He's even written novels and poetry. Maybe that's a novel under the autobio. WIKI was bitching about standards on his entry (which were fine). WIKI was being a little bitch. WIKI is getting...
World Class Poetry Blog (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
It’s not the best reading in the world, but after a couple of weeks of being under the weather I thought this poem by Wallace Stevens might be apropos. Written in 1915, “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” is still one of the great poetic mysteries of the 20th century. At least, I think so.
TED BURKE, like it or not (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
Ginsberg and Ashbery are post modernists,but they are also many other things. Ginsberg is a romantic, sure, but he was the one in the 20Th century, confronted with mass-media, A bombs, televised unpopular wars, the whole 60s shot, and his response to these accelerated times had to push the hackneyed envelope. If he trusted his sensibilities to make sense of the world, apart from the mind of God guiding...
Poetry & Poets in Rags (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
poetry the way a child likes snow, and they would if poets wrote it." Poets yielded turf to prosers when Dickens started capturing gritty urban landscapes that people were actually slogging through, while poets kept writing about fairies or knights in armor. That's where your "elevated" artistic sensibility gets you. from Mary Karr: Publishers Weekly: The Monday Interview ~~~~~~~~~~~...
ursprache (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Marjorie Perloff delivered the 2009 Wallace Stevens Birthday Bash lecture at the Hartford Public Library last Saturday night. Her talk was entitled: "Beyond Adagia: Eccentric Design in Wallace Stevens' Poetry." “Poetry is a pheasant disappearing in the brush.” —Wallace Steven, Adagia
Books, Inq. (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
... Lives Less Ordinary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) ... I was very much looking forward to my task when, in 2005, I was asked by the Spectator to review Douglas Parker’s 2005 biography of Nash. If only I had known. Nash, you see, was a hardworking light versifier who sometimes lived in Baltimore and sometimes in New York, loved and remained faithful to his wife, wrote regularly for The New Yorker...
Ode to Poetry (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
Sorry to be neglectful of this dear little blog. I have just been having so much fun with a new project, 365 Days of Twenty . Please, check it out. Hope you enjoy. But alas, don't worry. I am still an avid poetry lover. What am I reading these days? Well, in a class I'm taking I've been examining the works of Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. But, these...
Five Branch Tree (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
When reading Aiken, Wallace Stevens was the first to come to mind for a poet of similar style. A difference could be that where Aiken wrote poetry more for the act of speech, Stevens wrote poetry to emphasize the act of the imagination. A subtle difference, but still there. An analogy could be that Aiken’s poetry sings to the angels while Stevens’ sings with the angels. Stevens delves into...
Brian Palmu (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
Money, like power, flows here and there according to the dictates of a very peculiar mix of educational and social philosophies, poltical events, community mood, student pressures, and institutional opportunism. -- John Hersey, Yale alumnus, from LETTER TO THE ALUMNI (1970). An apologia? No, my friends, we at the Yale University Press’ human resources hadjit-prop arm of literary succinctness...
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