Lawrence Ferlinghetti
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter.
Allen Ginsberg
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
The Conservative Galaxy
Who really runs to Republican Party and the right wing in America? Check this handy-dandy chart!
Looking For Book Recommendations?
Ask the Bookseer!
An Elegy For Handwriting
I will be saddened if children a generation or two don’t learn to write. I use a fairly expensive Cross fountain pen. I even have a quill and inkpot. So I will never cease to use handwriting, but even I struggle with cursive these days and I don’t know if any of my sisters’ children can use it at all, except to sign their name.
Also, as an argument for handwriting, there was this tidbit from the article:
Some research suggests that the conjunction of brain and writing hand is possibly more efficient.
BHL
I can buy everything in the article but this statement:
…[Bernard-Henri Lévy] was once an important [philosopher].
Seriously? When was he ever an important philosopher? Is this during the same period when Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan were ‘intellectuals?’
Thank You, Post-Dispatch
Lots of year end ‘best of’ and ‘top ten’ lists have been coming out of the last month or so.
Those that look at books, rarely examine poetry.
Well, the good folks at the St Louis Post-Dispatch put together a year end ‘best of’ list and, wouldn’t you know it, poetry gets its own section!
Good for you! Wish the NYRB and other publications would follow your lead and give poetry a little less short shrift and a little more love.
Anyway – here’s their list (scroll down to the bottom to find the poetry).
Boston Globe’s Best Poetry Books Of 2011 Lists
You can read their lists here.
I would like to point out the presence of Charles Simic, who was one of my gateways into contemporary poetry, and DC poet, Sandra Beasley, though she is best known as memoirist, rather than a poet.
More American Nietzsche
I still haven’t read American Nietzsche, but I did stumble across another review of it, slash, a meditation on the concept of it.
Methinks I really need to read this book. A couple of items I had read about before was Mencken’s role in promoting Nietzsche on this continent and the other was the accusation that Walter Kaufmann ‘sanitized’ Nietzsche. Because, yes, I came to Nietzsche through Kaufmann and his ubiquitous translations (particularly the one pictured).
The Poetry Room
The Library of Congress has some very underrated poetry programs, beyond just inviting whoever is the current Poet Laureate to come read at the beginning and end of his or her tenure. Unfortunately, they also tend to be at times when working men like myself just can’t make it (noon? really?).
But, they do at least have a Poetry Room with some great views (actually, the various Library buildings have a number of great views – the advantage of living in a city with height restrictions is that even buildings that aren’t so very tall by urban standards can provide some lovely vistas).
In case you were curious, those framed photographs in the picture are of former Poet Laureates.
Hitchens & Poetry
Christopher Hitchens on Auden.
Though I shuddered to read him call Pound’s writings as ‘the sinister gibberish on the page.’
the coffee philosopher 