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Anarchical Plutocracy
From the video of an interview with Geoffrey Hill I have struggled over the years, without success, to enjoy Geoffrey Hill’s poetry. Its difficulty is not so defeating as its lack of humor, its deep and finally (for me) corrosive pessimism. Clearly this is a completely subjective response and has nothing to do with the value of Hill’s work, which for others is stratospherically high. But I have to say that this interview with Hill is sending me back to his work, yet again, with a fresh perspective.Read More
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Walk It Off
REPUBLICAN HEALTH CARE HAIKUby Stephen Colbert blood in the urine,a tingling down the left arm:walk it off, grandmaRead More
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Good News from Boulder, Colorado
The national campaign to Abolish Corporate Personhood and Defend Democracy.Sign the Petition: http://MoveToAmend.org/motion-to-amend * * * Last night Boulder became the second city in the nation to pass a ballot measure calling for an amendment to the US Constitution that would state that corporations are not people and the legal status of money as free speech! At midnight, with 93% of the ballots counted, the measure was handily winning with 74% of voters in support. Boulder’s campaign is the latest grassroots effort by Move to Amend, a national coalition working to abolish corporate personhood.Read More
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Tibetan Poet Jailed
Thanks to Conrad DiDiodato for his heads-up on the case Tibetan poet Tashi Rabten, who has been sentenced to a 4-year jail term for publishing poems that displeased the Chinese government. I frankly don’t know what to do about this kind of thing. I stand in solidarity with Rabten, though I doubt the Chinese government follows this blog.Read More
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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
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And They Wonder Why People Are In the Streets
Thanks to Juan Cole’s Informed Comment for this oneRead More
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D. A. Powell Responds to Occupy Wall Street
THE GREAT UNRESTby D. A. Powell When I lie down I think, ‘How long before I get up?’ The night drags on, and I toss and turn until dawn. (Job 7:4) You’d think, bedraggled as I am by the illness of my age,I’d be able to lounge a little. That I’d shut out the noise, as others do,and I would sigh and sleep. Let me eat Tootsie Pops, I’d think. Let me lay in the moonlightand grow the opposite of babyfat. Lie, I mean. Let me lie. I have had to wrestle with grammarall my life.Read More
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Hypocralert
On the subject of hypocrisy (ongoing, yet continually surprising), this from the November issue of Harper’s Magazine—its “Harper’s Index”: July 13, 2011: Republican (Ill.) Joe Walsh said Washington can’t put “one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids.” Date the Issue of Harper’s Went to Press: Walsh owed $98,422 in back child support.Read More
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Wallace and Me
I was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds. —Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird“ When I read Conrad DiDiodato’s terse, intelligent political post this morning, the first thing that came to mind was a rousing “Yes!” There are brutal assaults on human rights going around the world that deserve our attention. The second thing that came to mind was the above stanza from Stevens’s famous poem. It brought with it the shadow of a doubt. There are always brutalities that deserve our attention.Read More
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What Is It About Republicans and Their Love Of Low-Achievers?
Texas Governor James Richard “Rick” Perry’s Texas A&M University transcript speaks for itself.Read More