A review of a collection of 20th century Italian poetry.
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Wesley Sneijder Not Right For Manchester United
I don’t care how long the rumors go on. I don’t think he’ll go to Manchester United and if he does, I think it will go badly.
Why? Because Sneijder can’t play in 4-4-2.
If you play him in the middle, you put too much pressure on his partner to perform all the defensive duties (because he’s not at all suited to doing much defense work himself). Or else you require the outside midfielders to come inside frequently to provide defensive support in the middle. The first option leaves the midfield in danger of being overrun, plus leaves a big gap between the central midfielders and no good way to connect them and just generally leaves the team unbalanced and with easy to exploit holes. The second option completely wastes the primary talents of the team’s best outside midfielders, who bring pace, width, and direct running and also requires a complete reworking on the team’s focus on speed on the outside.
If you play Sneijder on the outside, you lose speed on the wings and also put a lot of pressure on the full back, who will be tasked with covering that flank while Sneijder invariably goes on walkabout in the center of the park, instead of covering the outside.
Basically, you have to play him centrally behind a lone striker.
Wayne Rooney can absolutely play that role, but is Danny Welbeck, rising star of the Manchester attack ready to be relegated to the bench? He’s a rising player for England with a good chance of representing his country at the European Championships and he’s worked his way into a starting role for his team. But there’s no room for him if Sneijder is playing, except as a sub or on the flanks. So how long before he starts looking to leave? So in return for getting a 28 going on 29 year old midfielder with 2-3 more years at the top of his game, you will probably lose a rising striker who can be a key player for the next decade.
Sneijder belongs in Italy, where the classic playmaker is still used.
Happy Birthday, Aldous Huxley
Today is Aldous Huxley’s birthday. I will celebrate not by reading Brave New World, but by reading his first novel and one of my guilty pleasures: Crome Yellow.
Weekend Reading – Conceptual Writing, Jesus… You Know, The Usual Suspects
Thursday Staff Meeting – Canons
The Dark Room Collective
There was a sort of reunion of members of the Dark Room Collective on Monday night, put on by the Folger Shakespeare Library but actually held at the church across the street (which has considerably more seating – and the place was still pretty full).
The Dark Room Collective (and I had not been familiar with them before attending this reading) was a sort of group house for African-American artist-activists in Cambridge that (when the house was sold off) evolved into a sort all purpose artistic clearinghouse for writers, painters, sculptors, dancers, and musicians. But always, it appears, poets, poetry, and poetry readings held a central place in its history and the role it saw for itself.
Present this particular were eight poets of, admittedly, varying quality and charisma (none were poor, but several would be considered among the country’s leading poets, so naturally stood out). The poets present were: Tisa Bryant,Thomas Sayers Ellis, Major Jackson, John Keene, Tracy K. Smith, Sharan Strange, Natasha Trethewey, and Kevin Young. Among that group, you might have picked out the names of Smith (who just won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection, Life on Mars), Trethewey (who won a Pulitzer in 2007 for Native Guard), and Young (who wrote The Gray Album, a book which is very du jour right now).
I enjoyed listening to about two thirds of the poetry read, but loved all the descriptions of the early days of the Collective and was intensely jealous of their participation in that history.
I bought one book, of course – Smith’s Life on Mars – and got it signed.
Midweek Staff Meeting – The Most Stylish Critic
The B Spot Jazz Trio; Or, Is Cornel West Drunk?
Last Saturday night, my better half I ambled over to the B-Spot, a teahouse on the second story a building on Pennsylvania, just above a pizza-by-the-slice shop.
I haven’t been there in a while, but I keep on meaning to go for their regular, Saturday night jazz sets, usually featuring the B Spot Trio, the teahouse’s aptly named house band.
The place serves quality tea (the owner takes his tea very seriously), is swankily decorated with modern looking furniture and paintings by local artists (the place also does brisk business in framing, which seems odd, but what the heck).
So I convinced her to come with me and listen to some tunes and drink some tea.
The Trio plays some good music and the crowd skews older – forties and up. With the more mature audience and the lack of alcohol, the vibe really was one of the coffeehouses I remember from my adolescence and early twenties, back when the main draw was not Starbucks latest attempt to serve a sixteen ounce cup of frothy milk, cut with a little coffee, nor even a place to bring one’s laptop, but rather music, poetry, and conversation.
And while my camera took a fuzzy picture, in the corner, next to the window, is a painting that looks for all the world like someone painted a portrait of Cornel West as if the philosopher was just coming off a two day bender and wearing a wife beater and drinking a warm bottle of beer.
the coffee philosopher 