January 28, 2008
Fossicking
My wife forwarded me this entry on The Guardian‘s book blog, which apparently went out on the Milton list today. In it, John Crace argues that John Milton, whose 400th […]
January 27, 2008
Finding the Form
Denise Levertov‘s Question: Is there inherent form that the poet can discover and reveal? This is us, in each moment at the paper, fretting over what it should be and […]
January 27, 2008
Book bearer
Lo and behold, Tom Stoppard already owns a version of the thing I’ve been coveting for at least a decade: a book valise, a drop-front super-satchel, a portable bookshelf (designed […]
January 26, 2008
Death to the Search Engine
Every day, I get closer to chucking this whole Internet thing and living in the basement of a real, honest-to-God library, where real information lives and breathes. At the very […]
January 26, 2008
Burn It
This post is the work of Rob Kunzig.–TM The Original of Laura, Vladimir Nabokov’s final work, rests secure in a Swiss Bank vault. The literary establishment is wetting their collective […]
January 25, 2008
This Is the World’s “Longest Lasting Lightbulb.”
It was first installed in 1901 and is located at the fire station in Livermore, California. According to the bulb’s website, “You can visit the bulb depending on the availability […]
January 24, 2008
More On Chesterton
I was in the middle of G. K. Chesterton’s essay “The Book of Job” when I began to get something of why so many admire his work. It seems fitting […]
January 24, 2008
Phoning It In
I can’t get my head around the article in the New York Times over the weekend on the craze for cellphone novels in Japan. Personally, I find it hard enough […]
January 24, 2008
Immediately Accessible Innovation
Mark Weber, proprietor of Zerx Press, releases an annual duo poetry chapbook with Gerald Locklin. One half is Weber’s work; flip it over and upside down for Locklin’s. This year, […]
January 22, 2008
The Joys of Local Reading #2
Today is sunny but chilly by Berkeley standards. The wind is blowing a cold front in. A good day to take the car to the carwash. All week I have […]
January 21, 2008
I Want To Be A Rider…
On a day that’s supposed to be the most depressing this year, I’m reading the Austrian poet Georg Trakl. Robert Bly noted in introducing his and James Wright’s translations (available […]
January 21, 2008
What’s in a Name?
Cliches about the thefts of writers abound. It’s not that writers are plagiarists–though perhaps sometimes they are–but the truisms about writers knowing how to steal from other writers are near […]