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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

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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)

Travis Nichols

Poetry Done Right

(Do your homework here.)

06.12.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (83)

Travis Nichols

The Music of Langston Hughes

While the Roots–everyone’s favorite late night house band–prepare for the West Coast premiere of Ask Your Mama this August, insatiable Langston Hughes fans should check out this week’s cover story: Franklin Bruno’s exploration of the poet’s 1957 Broadway musical comedy Simply Heavenly. The production featured a nearly-forgotten gem sung by Brownie McGhee that I can’t stop humming. Listen:

Bruno’s excellent reporting on the production features UFOs, Pete Seeger, Passing Strange, Sonny Terry, The Defender, and a whole lot more. Check it out here.

06.10.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Travis Nichols

Derek Walcott Drops Out

The big poetry news this week (besides the bizarre “poetry jam” over at the White House) is Derek Walcott’s withdrawal from the Oxford poetry race due to an anonymous letter-writing campaign detailing sexual harassment claims against him.

The campaign brought to light allegations from the Nobel-laureate’s time at Harvard. According to the New York Times:

The charges of sexual harassment date back nearly 30 years and were detailed in the book ‘The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus,’ by Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner — excerpts of which were sent in the anonymous packages. They describe how, in 1982, Mr. Walcott was accused of saying a number of provocative things to a woman who was a student in his poetry workshop at Harvard, including ‘Would you make love to me if I asked you?’

When she rebuffed him, the student said, he gave her a C grade.

Concluding in 1982 that the complaint had merit, Harvard reprimanded Mr. Walcott and changed the student’s grade from C to ‘Pass.’”

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05.13.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (72)