November 26, 2016
November Static
In one of my classes a few weeks ago, we were reading Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. About a third of the way through the novel, Kundera […]
October 15, 2016
Bob Dylan Won the Nobel Prize [!/?]
Learning of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature this week, I found myself observing, as if from a great distance, the point that the Committee was making (oral and […]
March 3, 2015
Night Thoughts (I)
Dickinson’s dashes and erratic capitalizations seem unusual or eccentric only to those who are unfamiliar with 19th century letter-writing. Byron’s letters, for example, are punctuated entirely in Dickinsonese, and similarly […]
May 24, 2014
The Future, The Present, The Past
So, 2150 looks to be a terrible year. We’ll still be ordering plastic junk and inadvertently killing one another. But at least irony will survive! As will a trace of sweetness. […]
December 16, 2013
Smacko, Redux
In Traveling Sprinkler, Nicholson Baker’s sort-of sequel to The Anthologist, poet Paul Chowder turns his attention to drone attacks, and songwriting, and ex-girlfriend wooing. He’s nearly “Fifty Fucking Five,” the […]