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Barnes & Noble Bid Bad News for Book Lovers


If you love book, the $1 billion bid for Barnes and Noble by Liberty Media, parent company of the QVC home shopping channel, is not a good thing.

They have no interest in running bookstores nor in selling books. They want to turn Barnes and Noble into a “media company” (yes, I know – books are a form of media – but you know what I mean), no doubt to hawk their other wares.

This is not about saving America’s largest bookseller chain. It’s about breaking it apart to better sell moisturizer and “simulated diamonds.”

Read more here about their plans to clear out those wasteful bookshelves to make more room for important stuff. Because “[y]ou don’t want the old-fashioned bookstore customer who goes in and sits and reads a book…”

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Ezra Pound: Canto XXVIII


The Twenty-Eighth Canto is rather interesting. Mostly, it is brief histories of Americans whose shared connection is some travel in Italy, some of the histories containing their rather bourgeois ends back in America. Stylistically, I thought of Gertrude Stein (who hated Pound), but I also couldn’t help thinking of the nattering Charlotte Bartlett in chaperoning her cousin on a trip to Rome in E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View.

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Poor Tim Pawlenty


I used to give Tim Pawlenty (T-Paw!) good odds of winning the GOP nod. He was the closest thing running to a generic Republican (and generic Republicans were polling far better against Obama than any actual, live Republican). He was so generic, in fact, that the only memorable thing about him was the Fisher-Price Baby’s First Mullet that he shaved off when he thought McCain might actually pick him instead of an Alaskan grifter.

How wrong was I?

Republican voters would clearly rather affix their hopes and Republican opinion makers their brief attention spans on a plastic Public grocery bag floating down the Hillsborough River than on Tim Pawlenty.

Let’s look at who they have rallied around instead of Pawlenty.

Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor famous for screaming at kindergarten teachers and video taping his tantrums in order to post them on Youtube.

Mitch Daniels, the short, boring, and balding architect of the Bush deficits.

Haley Barbour, a corpulent former lobbyists who sometimes likes to say that Jim Crow era racist organizations weren’t as bad as all that.

Paul Ryan, the man (and I use the term loosely – he looks like he won’t reach the age of consent for another two years) who single handedly torpedoed GOP poll numbers by releasing a plan designed alienate the only age group McCain actually won.

The current soup du jour is the recessionist from Texas, Rick Perry, who is also rumored to have the most firmly coiffed toupee in Austin.

Besides their gender and basic skin tone, the main things this motley crew has in common is that none of them are running for President and none of them are Tim Pawlenty.

Republican voters overwhelmingly despise the very core of Mitt Romney’s being and many suspect him of belonging to a cult (he doesn’t, by the way).

And Mitt Romney is kicking Pawlenty’s mulletted a–.

Herman Cain, whose claim to fame is getting 30% of the vote in a Senate primary and also being the CEO of a pizza chain no one cares about, is poised to overtake T-Paw in the polls.

Pawlenty looks like he’s going to be the Chris Dodd of Republican candidates. I have a great deal of respect for Senator Dodd and he’s a polite and accessible man in person, but his presidential campaign managed to be ignored and personally disastrous at the same time.

Sorry, Tim, but next November, instead of challenging Obama for the future direction of America, you will be taking calls on your rural Minnesota radio show and teaching classes at a correspondence college.

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Ezra Pound: Canto XXVII


The Twenty-Seventh Canto has a mournful, elegiac feel to it. Something of lost dreams to it.

The subject is the early part of the twentieth century, but with reference to Xarites (a Greek sounding name, but I don’t know it’s provenance) and the Phoenician prince Cadmus. But also to Italy, the Russia (many mentions of tovarisch – a kind of Russian calvary).

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On the Economy


If you’re not reading the new blog by economist Jared Bernstein, On the Economy, well then… why the heck aren’t you?

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Ezra Pound: Canto XXVI


The Twenty-Sixth Canto opens promisingly:

And
          I came here in my young youth
                         and lay there under the crocodile
          By the column, looking East on the Friday,
And I said: Tomorrow I will lie on the South side
And the day after, south west.

But then Pound goes on to indulge in his habit of writing out epistolary Renaissance era logistics.

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Ezra Pound: Canto XXV


The Twenty-Fifth Canto is almost entirely epistolary in nature. It opens with, frankly, one of those boring little re-enactments of historical logistical discussions, and then…

While giving lip service to the epistolary form, it becomes infected by stream of consciousness and half formed statements and thoughts – which are often gorgeous in their execution.

Lay there, the long soft grass,
                    and the flute lay there by her thigh,
Sulpicia, the fauns, twig-strong,
                                                gathered about her;
The fluid, over grass,
Zephyrus, passing through her,
                                                  ” deus nec laedit amantea “

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Bookstores Replaced by Wal-Marts?


A depressing vision of the future is on display here.

Wal-Mart replacing bookstores? Sad on several levels, including the fact that I won’t shop at Wal-Mart.

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Slam Poetry


I read Ron Silliman’s blog. Of course I do. Everyone interested in poetry who isn’t cut off from the internet either does or should.

Today, he wrote about slam poetry.

Tangled up in what his post – a mixture of poetics and film review (a documentary about four participants in the Louder Than Bombs youth slam competition) – are admiration, doubt, and concern for the future.

I have tried in the past to express my mixed feelings about slam poetry and I’m not sure that I managed to explain my own tangled opinions better than Silliman did (who could not come up with a final conclusion – which is not intended as a negative comment, merely an indication of all the factors involved).

You look at young people participating in slams and feel amazement and joy and hope that poetry will take root in their lives.

But then…

You ask if the slam participants read the poetic canon. You then ask yourself who created the poetic canon, with all its biases, and is it valid. You ask if the original question is not a little insulting. You ask if the formal aspect of poetry is lost in the slam tradition. You ask if it is a good thing for poetry culture in America to have competition based poetics take up so much space within our poetry culture.

I am of a certain age and socio-economic class where the literary culture was based on the written word, not the spoken word.

I was read to as a child, but as a transition to teach me to read quietly on my own, like the grown ups did. I was encouraged to speak and express myself and my thoughts and opinions, but nonetheless, our home was not a place of oral culture. Wisdom was to be found in books.

My own poetry, though it can be (and often is) read aloud and (I hope) holds its own in that scenario, is still deeply tied to the written word. Ultimately, it is not meant for slams. Which means any opinion I may have about slams could be tied up in jealousy. I participated in a lot of slams in my teens and twenties, but only won a competition once. I now longer compete because my poetry is not suited. Is it sour grapes at the feeling that maybe I am being left behind?

Like Silliman (if I read him correctly), I love what slams are doing. I question what slams are doing. I doubt and respect what slams are doing.

Also, check out this piece from Harriet the Blog.

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NRSC Chair STILL Has No Faith in Haridopolos, LeMieux & Hasner


Senator John Cornyn is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). It’s his job to protect incumbent Republican U.S. Senators and elect more Republican Senators in Democratic-held and open seats. Seats like the one currently held by Senator Bill Nelson.

And he still has no faith in Mike “the Appeaser” Haridopolos nor in George LeMieux nor in Adam Hasner.

How do we know?

Cornyn recently said, “I remain convinced that the quality of the candidate still makes a big difference.” He then went on to say, “The primary, if I’m not mistaken, is August of 2012. So it’s still early and there’s plenty of opportunity for people to get involved.”

The St Pete Times suggested that he chose his words carefully to avoid another kerfuffle (like when he tried to recruit Joe Scarborough).

I suggest that his meaning is crystal clear.

You see, when an NRSC chairs likes the candidates, he says things like, “We have a really strong group of candidates running in Florida.” Maybe he praises the leading candidate, saying, “X has a strong conservative record of standing up Florida’s values.”

Instead, he said that the quality of the candidates is very important and noted that, hey, if someone else (perhaps someone of greater quality than the embarrassments currently running) wants to get in, that’s cool – he or she has lots of time to take the lead from the sad crop campaigning right now.