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A Digital Recipe for Free Speech?
A distressing article about censorship in Iran ends with an account of one writer, novelist Reza Ghassemi, who dodged the repressions of Ahmadinejad’s “cultural ministry” by issuing his latest novel in PDF format. In this he joins our own Bill Knott in committing works to digital packets instead of paper.Read More
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Seth Abramson on The School of Quietude
I’ve become addicted to Seth Abramson’s blog The Suburban Ecstasies, in part because he always seems to be thinking out loud, not delivering sermons or condescending rants, and thinking out loud requires openness—a quality I value much more than the closed-circuit pronouncements of the Harold Bloom type.Read More
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Poundacious
“‘WHANG—Boom—Boom—cast delicacy to the winds.’ Thus Ezra Pound in a letter to his father, urging the old man to help promote his first published collection.” In a related story, this squib from Bill Knott’s blog: PENNY WISE well alrightI grant youhe was a fascistahem antisemitism theer war and allI’m not defending thembut at leastyou’ve got to admitat least hemade the quatrains run on timeRead More
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Knotty, Knotty…
Today’s posting on Bill Knott’s blog is a thought-provoking meditation on the turn American poetry has taken toward “spirituality.” Does it serve the right-wing agenda? Does it serve career-minded poets? Does it serve poetry at all? As Knott puts it, in his inimitable way: “Rilkemilky pietistic pap. [The alternative, post-avant elliptical ironity, is no better.Read More