I also have conflicted feelings about renting versus buying:
James Fenton and Mark Kraushaar
The Folger Shakespeare Library‘s most recent poetry reading featured the 2011 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize winner, Mark Kraushaar, who won for his second book, The Uncertainty Principle, and British poet James Fenton. Fenton was also the final judge of this Hecht Prize this year and selected Kraushaar for the honor.
Kraushaar was a somewhat awkward reader and his poetry not completely to my taste. I know that The Uncertainty Principle has wound up on several “best of” lists and I won’t deny its quality. It is just not my cup of tea.
His poems are very prosy and narrative with colloquial language. When introducing him, Fenton noted that his poems are indubitably “about something.”
Fenton suggested that too many poems are inscrutable for the sake of being inscrutable, or rather because of a vicious loop in the MFA community (there’s a lot of discussion about MFAs and their effect on poetry lately). He held Kraushaar as a counterweight to that.
Naturally, I am little unsure about that dynamic. I don’t mind – and frequently enjoy – poems that resist easy interpretation. “This poem is about X.”
However, when Fenton himself read, I was blown away.
Some years ago, in Alabama, I think, I bought a book of his poems. I don’t know why. I think that I barely touched them.
But listening to him read from his Selected Poems… intricate and compelling rhyme schemes, a fierce political ethic, and a willingness to put himself in the shoes of people far different from himself (a child soldier in Cambodia in the seventies, for example). Fantastic stuff.
Naturally, I bought his book and asked him to sign it.
Hixon Park
Floridians Love Libraries
This article gives you numbers on how very beloved they are.
While growing up in Dunedin, my mother and I went to the library all the time. In high school, it was a place to read and relax. In college, it was where I hid away and did my reading.
My roommate and I always walked up the Gulfport Public Library to read periodicals and check on local events posted on the bulletin board.
Here in DC, there’s a library just across from Eastern Market where I will browse (I indulged big time at their last book sale).
In short, huzzah for libraries.
Norman Spinrad
Norman Spinrad is a sci fi author who you probably haven’t read unless you read a lot of sci fi. Not that he’s not good, but he hasn’t been much of a crossover writer for a long time (crossover, in the sense of Ursual K LeGuin or Margaret Atwood crossing out of the genre trap into literary respectability or J.K. Rowling into widespread, if undeserved, fame).
While digging through the basement of my favorite local used bookstore, I picked up a book of his called Agent of Chaos. It was fast paced, decently written, leavened with an anarchist philosophy that was heavy handed, but not didactic. It was a slim, old fashioned sort of pulpy paperback that they just don’t make much of anymore. Love that kind of stuff.
After finishing it, I downloaded to my Nook a copy of Asimov’s Science Fiction, which is still a nice, pulpy magazine (at least in its physical format). I did so simply because it had a story by Spinrad.
I like the idea of Spinrad. He writes politically tinged (charged?) sci fi, he lives in Paris now and sometimes publishes in French. He is a former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. And one of his novels was denounced on the floor of the House of Commons.
This particular story was very different, though, from Agent of Chaos, which is an old fashioned space opera at its heart. An odd story about the songs of whales and other cetaceans and a sort of eco-fable. Not sure what I thought about it. I certainly agree with its sentiments, but not exactly what I was looking for.
Webcams
No. Not that kind. This is a family blog!
I’m talking about this – a live stream from Washington, DC, near the Capitol.
Funny how a familiar view of Union Station (which was what I saw when I first checked it out) can be so compelling.
Happy Birthday, John Keats!
Little did I know that Keats was born on Halloween.
The little used bookstore on Capitol Hill with the cranky owner sold me a marvelous little leather bound collection of his complete poetry, just the right size for a jacket pocket.
New Orleans’ Streetcars
I’ve always thought that the streetcar should be brought back into wide use, mainly because it’s far less expensive to set up street car lines than to dig the tunnels needed for a subway.
This article seems to agree.
The piece talks a good bit about the St. Charles streetcar in New Orleans. I have some wonderful memories of riding that line with my friend Dzifa, taking it from her Garden District apartment to the bars and restaurants of the French Quarter.
Connie Mack Running For Senate
He’s actually in.
This probably hurts LeMieux and McCallister the most. LeMieux because he will no longer have the “moderate” tag to himself. McCallister because he was never really doing well because people liked him, but just because they weren’t sold on Hasner and LeMieux – and now Mack will be the new shiny object for folks to look at.
The question now becomes whether Mack will be able to pull in the DC money that was flowing more to LeMieux and how much will state based interests put into independent expenditures on Hasner’s behalf (the corollary being whether Mack can raise enough to deal with those IEs).
Also, how much heat will he get for being married to a California congresswoman? It makes for a fine argument that he’s not really as deeply attached to Florida as he ought to be – presumably he’s spending not insignificant time in her Palm Spring district, as well spending a lot of time keeping house together in Washington. I don’t pretend to know the answers, but someone’s going to make hay out of this.
DC: Vegetarian Capital Of America
Washington, DC has the most diners who abstain from meat while eating out of any metropolitan area. We are also the most vegetarian friendly.
Take that San Francisco, you damn, dirty, anti-environment, animal haters!
the coffee philosopher 