January 2012
23 posts
“St. Thomas” — Sonny Rollins,...
“I cannot shut myself up within the realm of science. All my knowledge of the...”
– Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945, trans. 1962), ix-x
“Mornin’ Glory” — Bill Evans...
“Finally, know that an unshot skeet’s movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome...”
– David Foster Wallace, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”; offered here (warning: PDF) as a eulogy for DFW in his own words. The link contains eulogies from Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen, and others.
“I remember well enough to know it’s not a trick of hindsight, hearing...”
– John Jeremiah Sullivan’s review of The Pale King
[Onion] Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For... →
Classic album covers redone using clip art & Comic... →
Examples:
A 24/7 webcam on the famous Abbey Road crossing.... →
The Want Bone
The tongue of the waves tolled in the earth’s bell. Blue rippled and soaked in the fire of blue. The dried mouthbones of a shark in the hot swale Gaped on nothing but sand on either side. The bone tasted of nothing and smelled of nothing, A scalded toothless harp, uncrushed, unstrung. The joined arcs made the shape of birth and craving And the welded-open shape kept mouthing O. Ossified...
[The Onion] Corrections: The Wizard of Id
Due to a printing error, last week’s comics page did not include the final panel of The Wizard Of Id. The parrot was supposed to say, “That makes two of us!” The Onion apologizes for the omission.
Yelping with Cormac: Urban Outfitters →
Urban Outfitters
Union Square - San Francisco, CA
Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM
Three stars.
And they come there in great numbers shuffling into that mausoleum that was built for them like some monument to the slow death of their world and among those tokens and talismans of that faded empire they forage like scavengers their faces frozen in a rictus of worldweary their...
Impossible to Tell (by Robert Pinsky) →
Waking Up
But what woke just now at fifty-two years in narrow Dormitory bed, clock on a chair, underpulse Air-conditioning, damp tangle of dream plumage Its afterbirth nimbus—night thong and mandible? Possibly for a few seconds not more professor or Poet or parent or writing conference pooh-bah Than animal emigrant from those featherlands—the screen Of boxes, the alleyway weeping, the black iceberg, The...
December 2011
39 posts
Watch“Pelt,” written and read by Michael Symmons Roberts. Part of a series called Close-up Poetry.
New Year
a child carrying flowers walks toward the new year a conductor tattooing darkness listens to the shortest pause hurry a lion into the cage of music hurry stone to masquerade as a recluse moving in parallel nights who’s the visitor? when the days all tip from nests and fly down roads the book of failure grows boundless and deep each and every moment’s a shortcut I follow it through...
Influential psychologists answer the question,... →
I found all of these anecdotes and explanations to be well worth the read.
A Vermont factory owner was allegedly so moved by... →
Seamus Heaney does the literary world a great... →
WatchDrunk History: Christmas — Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, and Jim Carrey act out comedian Allan McLeod’s drunken attempt to recount “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (aka “The Night Before Christmas”).
“Poetry proper is never merely a higher mode of everyday language. It is rather...”
– Martin Heidegger, “Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 205
Excerpts from Paris Review's 2005 interview with...
Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert & Linda Gregg in Greece in the late sixties or early seventies
(Excerpted from this interview. Please read the whole thing.)
INTERVIEWER
When did you stop traveling?
GILBERT
I don’t think I’ve stopped. Traveling became more difficult about a year ago, but Linda and I went to Greece again. And this year, we’ll probably go someplace else.
A couple of...
“Untitled Piano Piece No. 4” — by me,...
Beyond Beginnings
(posted for December 15)
How could he later on believe it was the best time when his wife died unexpectedly and he wandered every day among the trees, crying for more than a year? He is still alone and poor on the island with wild flowers waist-deep around his stone hut. In June the wind will praise the barley stretching all the way to the mountain. Then it will be good in the harvested fields,...
One of David Foster Wallace's students, quoted in...
On the first day of class, Dave wore a cut-off Star Wars sweatshirt and a bandana to tie back his greasy hair. His spectacles gleamed. If I had been expecting the wunderkind ofInfinite Jest, my idealized visions crumbled as I watched him spit a stream of black tobacco spittle into a Slurpee cup. He looked less like a militant grammarian than a transient who had accidentally wandered into the...
[ScienceMag] College-age U.S. women increasingly... →
“I’ll Be Home For Christmas” —...
Shit My Students Write →
The pelvis of a female tends to be larger and wider than males for the passage of a child, hopefully during childbirth.
In life men develop different ideas of what being a man is. Some think that it’s about supporting a family. Others feel that it means beating each other off.
Sometimes, people are born with ambitious genitalia.
Playing House
I found another baby scorpion today. Tiny, exquisite, and this time without his mother. Alone in a bag of onions. I wonder what was between them, this mother and babe. Does she grieve now someplace up there hanging by her claws as she makes her way awkwardly back and forth across my bamboo ceiling? Is there a bewildered sound? Like the goat calling her eaten kid for three long days. Is there a...
“Mr. Grover, can you tell me WHICH one of these things is not like the others and...”
– Twitter’s GOP Muppet Hearings (click for more tweets), in response to FOX News allegations that the new Muppet movie is radical leftist propaganda since its villain is oil tycoon Tex Richman
The Cosby Sweater Project →
Every week, a Cosby sweater and a drawing of its pattern.
Another great use of Tumblr: The Same Picture Of Dave Coulier Every Day
“White Christmas” — arranged and...
