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Poetry & Resistance


James Longenbach on ‘The Resistance to Poetry’

This article appeared at a rather fortuitous time, as I have been re-reading Plato and writings about Plato and his objection to poetry. But like the idea of poetry and resistance. The immediate assumption, when you hear ‘poetry and resistance,’ is that speaker is talking about political resistance and poetry’s role and potential within activism. But there’s also poetry as resisting simple meanings, as resisting language itself, as resisting being assimilated or co-opted by society and culture.

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Reading Poems From Your Phone


This would piss me off, too.

I still see poetry as being intrinsically attached the page (yes, yes – I know that poetry began as an oral art). And I would definitely feel cheated if I went to a poetry reading and someone started to read a poem from their f–king phone. Cheap, man. Real cheap.

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Merry Christmas From Washington, DC


(there isn’t actually any snow in DC this year, by the way – for which I am most pleased)

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Marx The Poet?


I still think he’s a better philosopher…

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Missing Trilling


It’s true. We lack a cultural figure on the level of Trilling and having the larger cachet of Trilling.

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More People Who Miss Borders


A paean to the Borders in Palo Alto.

I picked up my better half at a shopping center in the DC suburbs. Coming in, I noticed that it listed Borders as a tenant on the sign. Which made me realize that that space is almost certainly empty now.

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How Public Intellectuals Sold Out


Well, assuming you buy the premise, here’s a review of one view on the question.

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The Dangers Of Being The Eldest Son Of A Great Man


Poor Hartley…

Note: using ‘son’ rather than ‘child’ was not intended to be sexist, but merely reflect the times referred to… in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, there wasn’t so much pressure on the daughters of important men (and they were mostly, though not exclusively men at the time) to follow in their parents’ footsteps to greatness.

Apropos of the season, I should note that Jesus seemed to handle the pressure okay…

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Poetry Apps


Famously, one of the best selling apps in England was about T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.

Now, in Mexico, Octavio Paz is storming the iPad app world.

Still waiting to find out the best selling app in America is something about Walt Whitman. Should I hold my breath?

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Happy Birthday, Harriet Monroe


Harriet Monroe, founder of Poetry, our country’s most prestigious poetry mag, was born on this day in 1860.