My Last Year as a Democrat
I’ve been a registered Democrat for 36 years, but this is the year I will change to Independent. I simply no longer want to be associated with the mendacious, ignorant, self-involved, politically incoherent, power drunk, third-rate clowns who run the party. Take a look: Here, Congressional Democrats have decided to fund the opposition — not [...]
Weather Radar
As a kid, I was fascinated by the weather & read about fronts & air pressure & the rest. I got my mother to buy me a cheap barometer. Now, with a couple of mouse clicks, I have better information about the weather than meteorologists had only a couple of decades ago. It has been [...]
Paul Klee’s Diaries
When I was 17 I had only just discovered modern painting. I had a book of Paul Klee’s paintings that I would pour over & over. It is hard for me to describe the sense of wonder I felt looking at these images. I was also looking at other 20th century painters & reading Modernist [...]
Sincerity & Sentimentality
There is a discussion going on at Poetryetc regarding the role of sincerity in poetry, which some have equated with the use of the “lyric I.” God knows there are abuses of sincerity scattered over the poetic landscape like junked cars photographed exquisitely in black & white, but the rejection of sincerity is a stance, [...]
Two Kinds of Poetry
Inspired by Jonathan Mayhew’s naming of a pair of poetic fallacies, I’d like to propose a kind of Klein Bottle paradox of the “lyric I.” In current poetic culture it is fashionable to eschew the first person as gauche & “sincere” in a sense where to be sincere is to be stupid &/or dishonest. Well, [...]
The Box Garden of Poetry
In comments to my post on Ashbery, which has shuffled off the main page, Kenneth (whom I do not know) left this comment. I thought it was so insightful I wanted to bring it to the top of the deck:
Are there corridors of poetic power? I only hope they are more about turning lights on [...]
Laura Riding’s Sweet Irony
I keep the lovely Persea Books edition of Riding’s Poems on a shelf near my desk. I’ve never made a systematic go at it, but I take it down regularly & read a couple of poems. I identify with Riding’s reticence. And her subtle, subversive irony:
AS TO A FRONTISPIECE
If you will choose the portrait,
I will [...]
The Pure Product
I suppose there is some sense in which Tony Lagouranis is a victim, but I’m having a hard time working up much sympathy for him. According to the Washington Post, which has a weepy article about the effects of torture on torturers this morning: “Not long ago in Iraq, he [Lagouranis] felt ‘absolute power’ . [...]
Turn Around
When we first moved into out house eighteen years ago, it faced the road, a little dirt lane that dead-ends about 200 feet past our driveway. That is, there was an open porch on that side with some rickety steps. After living here a few years, we enclosed the porch to make a kind of [...]
Parataxis Paraschmaxis
I was out watering some things in the garden this evening & looking north I could see a big thunderhead, though the sky overhead was clear, just a little hazy. Coming indoors just now, I checked the weather radar on the computer & could see the cell of storms I had been watching moving [...]
« go back — keep looking »
