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X-Rays and Fowling Pieces

Shout out to a poet whose poems – like X-rays – are quick, high-voltage and penetrating… like this one, called, well, “The X-Ray” –

09.09.09 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

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Real life

“I do not know what you think of departments of English, but the good ones are not random collections of tedious pedants…”

08.03.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (143)

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The line’s for real

Not infrequently, we get letters or blog-responses to individual poems published in Poetry that cite particular phrases or lines in order to prove somehow that a poem or poet (and, by implication, our taste) is lousy.  It’s an invidious tactic, and it occurs to me that one can make any poem in the world look bad by pulling a line or so out of context.  Summer’s here and the time is right for fun and games, so… shall we give it a try?  Are there any foolproof poets or poems?   Care to dissect a few?  So far, the only poem I can think of that seems immune is Blake’s “The Tyger.”  Or am I wrong about all this?

06.24.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (99)

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I Hate Poetry… Reviews?

Pictured above: not quite a dead horse, but one that looks a little flogged.

06.04.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (49)

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Standing and waving

The idea that poets and novelists possess separate and incompatible temperaments, like fortune-tellers and pharmacists, that poets are preoccupied with language (“for the life of the language”) while novelists are engrossed by society (“for the betterment of the world”), is a commonplace—perhaps also a consequence—of the paced battlements of the contemporary literary world. In this account, poets and novelists are not merely working at different kinds of writing. Their minds also work differently. Poets are introspective, miniature, and self-fascinating (“I am the personal,” Wallace Stevens declares in “Bantams in Pine-Woods”). Novelists are expansive, systematic, prone to looking through other people’s mail. Novelists are hardy gossips, bred to realism. Poets are post-Romantic waifs of imagination. Poets’ thoughts move cyclically, in rich depths of metaphor, while novelists’ thoughts accumulate in a straight line. The two are unsuited to each other’s work, because—as a commenter writes on the literary blog “Ward Six”—poets “don’t think in terms of story, they think in rhythmic images and symbols, just as novelists, when they try to write poetry, are plodding and linear.”

Is there any reason to believe that this is true?

05.18.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (53)

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Craig Arnold

5/13: According to the Associated Press, “a team from a Japanese climbing group called Canyons will descend the steep, vegetation-covered slope where Arnold was tracked…. the climbers have committed to search for two days, starting Thursday morning in Japan.”

Via Find Craig Arnold:

Our dear friends and family,

Though Craig himself has not been recovered, the amazing expert trackers of 1SRG have been able to make themselves and us certain of what has become of Craig. His trail indicates that after sustaining a leg injury, Craig fell from a very high and very dangerous cliff and there is virtually no possibility that Craig could have survived that fall. Chris will pursue what he can about getting specialists to go down into the place we know Craig is so we can bring him home, but it is very, very dangerous and we are not yet completely certain what that will require. The only relief in this news is that we do know exactly what befell Craig, and we can be fairly certain that it was very quick, and that he did not wait or wonder or suffer.

I cannot express again the profound gratitude I feel to everyone who has loved and honored Craig with their goodwill, their immense efforts and energy, and their overwhelming generosity. I believe that where he is, Craig knows.

There will be further occasion to celebrate Craig, and when I know more I will post it.

For my part, I love Craig beyond the telling of it and will always love him as immeasurably, as enduringly, as steadfastly and as unconditionally as I do now and have done these past six years. In leaving our family Craig, in a manner absolutely characteristic of his own vast generosity and capacity to inspire, brought us all closer together than we perhaps have ever been. I feel his presence, loving and understanding and funny and deeply feeling, at all times. I hope you do, too.

With love,

Rebecca Lindenberg

05.08.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (6)