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In the beginning of Paradise Lost, Milton paints and points and dallies, filling eight lines with sorrow and hope and mountains and fruit, disobeying the strictures of English grammar in favor of the more contorted Latinate, including, even, an “or” in line seven that threatens to undermine his progress, such as it is, until, in the beginning of line nine, he finally delivers the phrase “In the beginning”—the first words of Genesis—and then the sentence continues for several more lines, such that “In the beginning” serves as a sort of hinge, swinging the reader backward into the book’s preliminary lines or forward, if he will, into what follows, itself functioning as a sort of “or,” an opener of possibilities, a poser of questions.

It’s not over yet.

As if in tardy celebration of Milton’s 400th birthday (which, you’ll remember from all the parties, was last year), scholars and graphic novelists and rightist revisionists have been reworking the Bible. Certain conservatives are seeking to reform and void the King James version, which they view as troublingly liberal, while a Dutch scholar investigates Genesis’s first verb. R. Crumb’s Genesis is forthcoming, as is David Rosenberg’s Literary Bible. You’re doubtless wondering, as I am: will any of these make the Good Book an even Better Book?

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10.14.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (14)

Abigail Deutsch

Poetry is dead! Long live poetry!

Writers keep writing about the end of writing.

The English department is declining. Comparative literature has died. Book reviews? Print journalism? Poetry?

There’s just one problem: no one gets into details. I want to know exactly when and why literature, and poetry in particular, will croak. Will it happen in bed or on the street? Will poetry die in peace, or in the throes of a guilty conscience?

And so, in the style of the solemn journalism covering this crisis, I offer a few speculative reports for a nonexistent newspaper (call it my personal musepaper).

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10.09.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Abigail Deutsch

In memoriam: William Safire, a gem of a wordsmith

Was William Safire a poet?

No.

He was a Nixon speechwriter, a conservative pundit, a four-time novelist, and a funny, fastidious observer of English usage.

But can we detect his influence, however great or small, on such dextrous manipulators of contemporary verse as Matthea Harvey, Heather McHugh, and Paul Muldoon (among others, perhaps including you, dear commenter)?

Yes.

And could anyone encounter a poem about a bartender, say, without recalling Safire’s column on bartenders, barmen, barmaids, barkeeps, innkeepers, and so forth?

I certainly can’t.

Some background:

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09.29.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (12)

Abigail Deutsch

“The” “age” “of” “genius”

2005-Kings-County-Fair-Rese

In a recent Slate article, Ron Rosenbaum explores uses and abuses of the word “genius,” suggesting:

Maybe genius has been, if not democratized, more widely and thinly distributed, rather than concentrated in the hands of a precious few…. Maybe we no longer live in the kind of romantic age that created Byron, the template of genius.

Or maybe we do.

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09.25.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (9)

Abigail Deutsch

Keats lives! (for a while)

Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate:—
‘Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article.

—Lord Byron

Keats didn’t actually die because of a bad review. But if he had, how would he feel now that Bright Star, Jane Campion’s film about him, is garnering so much positive press?

Being dead, he probably wouldn’t feel much of anything. If he weren’t dead, though, his waxen cheeks would flush, his vague eyes focus, his chapped lips tremble. He’d study Entertainment Weekly and Time Out and The San Francisco Chronicle. He’d linger over the blog entries, gasping with pleasure – or horror? “O, for a glass of vintage!” he would whisper, emotions high. It would take him so long to read all the reviews that, unfortunately, he would die before he finished.

And so it is in memoriam to John Keats (1795-2009) that I offer a round-up of numerous, luminous Bright Star reviews. Your blogger found a total of 55, terminating her search only when she could no longer focus her eyes.

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09.18.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (8)

Joel Brouwer

Today

I was deep in the heart of the heart of the country on September 11, 2001, and spent much of the day trying and failing to fight off abstraction, to somehow worm my way into the reality.

Poems can sometimes help with that.

The Poetry Foundation has these poems available for your perusal today. No offense, fine poems, but kind of a weird list, isn’t it?

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09.11.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (13)

Kenneth Goldsmith

The Tortoise And The Hare: Dale Smith and Kenneth Goldsmith Parse Slow and Fast Poetries

tortoise-hare-1

Dale Smith: As a poet I’m invested in the history of poetics, its long lore, and its entanglements with philosophy, rhetoric, politics, and other modes of thought and conversation. For me, how we relate to history — our various understandings of it — is essential.

Kenneth Goldsmith: Any notion of history has been leveled by the internet. Now, it’s all fodder for the remix and recreation of works of art: free-floating toolboxes and strategies unmoored from context or historicity.

Read the whole conversation here

08.10.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (28)

Travis Nichols

Of Love and Chain Letters (Borderline Ballads)

The New York Post reported yesterday that the Madonna once called on Anne Sexton’s poem “Love Song” to justify her love of a former bodyguard, Jim Albright.

“In a fax dated Dec. 24, 1993, Madonna wrote to Albright: ‘I was the girl of the love letter/ the girl full of talk of dreams and destination . . . the one with her eyes half under the covers/ with her large gun-metal blue eyes/ with the thick vein in the crook of her neck.’ Sexton’s poem read: ‘I was the girl of the chain letter/ the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes . . . the one with her eyes half under her coat/ with her large gun-metal blue eyes/ with the thin vein at the bend of her neck.’

The love fax (!!!) is one of many items up for auction at Gotta Have It Collectibles this week, though presumably the only one related to Anne Sexton (I do envision “Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator” scribbled on a Vogue-era cone bra uncovered one day). Sexton’s name has come up with unexpected frequency already this summer, most notably when Ange Mlinko compared her to Frederick Seidel in The Nation.

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08.06.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (25)

Joel Brouwer

Renaissance redux?

antony-gormley-terracotta-army

Pop quiz: What do Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Frank McCourt, Art Buchwald, Pete Hamill, Edward Abbey, Elmore Leonard, Mario Puzo, James Dickey, James Wright, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Randall Jarrell, Frank O’Hara, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, A.R. Ammons, Paddy Chayevsky, Rod Serling, Aaron Spelling, Terry Southern, Walter Matthau, Robert Duvall, Tony Curtis, Harry Belafonte, Rod Steiger, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Krikorian, Dan Spiegle, Robert Miles Runyan, Kenneth Noland, LeRoy Nieman, Richard Callner, Ed Rossbach, and Robert Perine have in common?

Answer after the break. Don’t click until you’ve made your guess. One thing you’ve already noticed is that they’re all men. That’s sort of a hint.

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08.01.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (25)

Travis Nichols

Square School Girl Blows Geek Minds

Over at Comic-Con International 2009, Fantagraphics Books has announced that they will soon re-release the complete run of the Ernie Bushmiller-penned (and Joe Brainard-beloved) comic strip Nancy.

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07.27.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (9)

Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Abigail Deutsch

And how should I begin?

Abigail Deutsch

Poetry is dead! Long live poetry!

Abigail Deutsch

In memoriam: William Safire, a gem of a wordsmith

Abigail Deutsch

“The” “age” “of” “genius”

Abigail Deutsch

Keats lives! (for a while)

Joel Brouwer

Today

Kenneth Goldsmith

The Tortoise And The Hare: Dale Smith and Kenneth Goldsmith Parse Slow and Fast Poetries

Travis Nichols

Of Love and Chain Letters (Borderline Ballads)

Joel Brouwer

Renaissance redux?

Travis Nichols

Square School Girl Blows Geek Minds

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