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... →
“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...
Watch“Cello Suite No. 1 - Prelude” — J. S. Bach, performed by orbs.
“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...
Allegedly The Actual Pitch "Fur" The Next Air Bud... →
“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”
– Tallulah Bankhead
Evolution of My Block
As a boy I bicycled the block w/a brown mop top falling into a tail bleached blond, gold-like under golden light, like colors of Noble Knights ’banging on corners, unconcerned w/the colors I bore—a shorty too small to war with, too brown to be down for the block. White Knights became brown Kings still showing black & gold on corners now crowned, the block a branch branded w/la corona...
“At least one busload of protesters (around 40 people) was forced to spend seven...”
– Yasha Levine, an Occupy LA member giving an account (after being released from jail) of how peaceful protesters are treated in the Land of the Free.
“Christmas Time Is Here...