May 11, 2013
Neureligion
There is very little (if any) variability in the brains of human beings regarding cortical localization. That is, the motor cortex responsible for, say, left arm movement, is reliably […]
April 15, 2013
On Being Silenced
Quick note: I have just received a phone call and follow-up email re-inviting me to the festival. Much has changed in the last two weeks. From my last post to today, […]
August 31, 2012
Forms of Enthusiasm: On Poetry Criticism, Book Reviews, and (yes, again) Blurbs
You may have heard something over the last week or two about William Giraldi’s review of two Alix Ohlin books in The New York Times. It’s a wildly negative review […]
March 7, 2012
Notes on Capital-T Tragedy
1. Why it started with the Greeks and showed up again with the Elizabethans. What makes a tragedy tragic—as opposed to a story with a sad ending—is that the sufferer […]
February 25, 2012
Translation and money laundering
A friend just sent me a link to this excellent interview at the Loggernaut reading series (dateless, it seems, and also timeless?) with Ammiel Alcalay—author, most recently, of “neither wit […]
February 5, 2012
Slits in the Cell Door
The senses are overrated. It’s natural we should rate their authority so highly. What else do we know? Still, a corrective is long overdue. The human retina can perceive […]
January 26, 2012
The Widening Circle: King, Gandhi, Christ
Morality is pesky. Is our notion of right and wrong just a function of socialization? Or is there something cosmic, objective, external about it, as constant as the speed […]
December 28, 2011
Blog Post: Two Revisitings
I read over my first posts to see if the remove of time could add any insight. It’s like sitting on a “finished” poem to see if it’s still good […]
December 27, 2011
Metaeuphoria: In Praise of Metaphor
Of course, you have been thinking since that last post, well of course you can “believe” these myths and Gods after you reduce them to symbols and metaphors. Your “belief” […]
December 26, 2011
Mythistory; or Against Literalism
The last post, which ended with a note how myth and scripture are a foundation of literature (and, I should add, art and music), got me thinking about the preservation […]
September 29, 2011
Short Takes: The No-Longer-Missing Piece
Mitch Myers, nephew of Shel Silverstein, on sifting through 1,500 of the late author’s poems aloud to find the 145 that would be included in the posthumous collection, Every Thing […]
September 13, 2011
Short Takes: Glossophobia
Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, to Raymond Chandler in 1958: “I don’t know if you do, but I find it extremely difficult to write about villains. Villains are […]