Winter Birds, A Lame Deer
As I stagger toward the end of a head cold, I wanted, on the theory that winter is ending, note that I saw a couple of mourning doves out in the road yesterday. I’d seen them — or another pair — two or three weeks ago, but then they disappeared. Because I’ve been spreading sunflower [...]
In Which Mark Jarman Reveals My Secret Fascist Sympathies on Alfred Corn’s Weblog
You can read the exchange here. What I find interesting is the way culturally conservative American poets have been scrambling away from movement formalism over the last few years, acting as if the New Formalism didn’t exist, as if the name itself, in Corn’s formulation, was “a misnomer.” Mark Jarman left a comment correcting Alfred [...]
Damning with (Very) Faint Praise
James Longenbach takes down the New Formalists via his review of Mary Jo Salter’s new book. Longenbach’s review in the NY Times rightly says that the wars between the New Formalists & the Language Poets now “. . . feel dated, part of the niggling history of taste rather than the grand history of art.” [...]
What He Said
Increasingly, I feel the same about politics & in particular about one politician as Jonathan Mayhew:
I’ve figured out why I don’t like Hillary. She is a Republican. That Commander-in-chief remark did it for me, because that particular synechdoche is a purely Republican trope.
You see, the constitution makes the president the commander in chief of the [...]
American Boys
Just like to kill animals for fun, I guess. A mark of their — & our — pathology.
(Poetic) Cultural Capital
So Paul Hoover sails off to Vietnam for two weeks, meets with a few writers, makes connections, comes home & publishes an anthology, Black Dog, Black Night, of 20th century Vietnamese poetry. I shopped around a similar book in 2001 when I returned from a year in Vietnam — my fifth trip to the country [...]
Spam Is Getting Smarter
Some spam bot left the following comment, flagged because I have the software set to send first-time comments to moderation:
i want an original copy of richard cory’s “stopping by woods on a snowy evening..though i qiuet admire you’re comment about this comment..i admit i’ve learned a lot from this poem..God bless!
Either that, or it’s auto-Flarf! [...]
