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Submission
Linh Dinh has a new Harriet post called “Poetry and Technology,”and it fairly bristled with interesting ideas. “One may begin writing a poem in complete freedom, that is, in complete randomness,” he notes, “but one should end the exasperating process in abject submission.” Another way of putting is that writing a poem is like digging your own grave! (Linh also says, “With irony, everything is possible.”) One surprise in his post—surprising to me, though others may not find it so—is Linh’s revelation that he writes on a laptop while lying on his belly.Read More
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Six Contemporary Arab Poets
Don’t miss this rich, expansive post by the indefatigable Linh Dinh, consisting of translations by Tahseen al-Khateeb.Read More
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Linh Dinh on a Roll…
Linh Dinh is on a roll at his blog, Detainees. First, there’s this very rich post on the anima, alchemy, animism, and Betty Boop (including a classic BB cartoon with Cab Calloway singing the chorus to “St. James Infirmary Blues”). Next, there are three related articles (I recommend starting here and reading them in order) all dealing with Israel’s itch to attack Iran. One of the many things I admire about Dinh is his openness to every current out there—aesthetic, political, social, psychological, ecological, economic and more.Read More
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The Protestant Canoe
This post is a thank-you to Linh Dinh’s blog posting of Henri Michaux’s poem “Future” (which I encourage you all to read)…. From Henri Michaux’s sequence “Ravaged People”: On a vast expanse of liquid plain, in a colossal, ponderous, Protestant canoe that has come down from the North, he stands, stiff and alone, alone as a man can be when he is not on the path to salvation, when, in the dark zone, he has forced his way through the forbidden passage.Read More
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From the Other’s Side
Lihn Dinh’s blog entry today on Harriet begins with this observation: “American readers are familiar with the Vietnam War poetry of Bruce Weigl and Yusef Komunyakaa, etc., some may even have read former NVA Bao Ninh‘s novel, The Sorrows of War, but almost no one has read the war poetry of the South Vietnamese, on whose land much of the fighting took place, but that’s not so unusual, is it? How many know what Iraqi and Afghan poets are writing?” The truth of this is scalding, of course.Read More