-
A Melancholy Accident
From John Latta’s blog post yesterday—an eloquent (as usual) meditation on several related themes, which ends with this quotation from Thoreau‘s Walden: Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts “All aboard!” when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over—and it will be called, and will…Read More
-
An Anti-Review of Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems by Tadeusz Różewicz
Among my usual Google alerts from The Quarterly Conversation was a review of Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems by Tadeusz Różewicz. I’ve always found Quarterly Conversation reviews to be intelligent and insightful, and (full disclosure) Różewicz is one of my favorite poets—so I clicked right through to it. Unfortunately, this piece, by one Patrick Kurp, is an exception—that is, it is exceptionally skewed, snotty, and crackpottish.Read More
-
Music and Listening
Don’t miss John Latta’s musings on sound in poetry. Example: He lifts this Roman Jakobson quote from The Sound of Poetry / The Poetry of Sound: “Poetry is not the only area where sound symbolism makes itself felt, but it is a province where the internal nexus between sound and meaning changes from latent into patent and manifests itself most palpably and intensely.” One could walk around inside that idea for days.Read More