Hip hop can deal with emotions sort of but it’s not a strength. Nas’s song about dancing with his dead mother made me cry but that is neither here nor there. Moms make me cry in general. Whatever. It’s an exception. Hip hop is style and virtuosity. Bach’s counterpoint produces linearity by complicating the relations […]
(thanks, Josh Keiter) “Philosophy and the Poetic Imagination” is a good post about the difference between expressive and communicative language. It sums up the day’s dominant theory of the place, not just of poetry, but, one might argue, of human understanding in general: “Poetry evokes a special kind of thinking — where we interpret ordinary […]
Lucky for us, popular culture does not need to be affirmed or denied. It’s happening, and you and I, as members of the populace, are in it. This is not to say that there are not all sorts of ways to bargain with our position, en masse or otherwise. But this is to say that […]
Consumption of The Autobiographical Novel Justin Torres’ We the Animals is an admittedly autobiographical novel. Torres takes advantage of fiction’s freedoms as he pays attention to the careful placement of each object in each room. Like a doll’s house, it is the perfect replication of an image, a created memory. The reader is allowed […]
Tayari Jones’ novel Silver Sparrow tells itself in memory and present, retrospect and retelling. The prose simply happens. It slips underneath and into you. Moves you from inside. Poised in history but set in the intimacy of individuals, Jones calls forward icons and minutiae with equal reverie. Her details are invocations, passages through which characters […]
Poem This installment draws down against William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All, specifically, XXI: “The Red Wheelbarrow”. You know this. so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. and so: CounterPoem define this(object) (reference self whole) or (reference not that) define was(subject object) (is past tense) or (used […]
by Tom Bair I can’t find New York. I’ve looked everywhere. It’s okay though. I’m not too worried. I lose things all the time, and so . . . so I’ve picked up many methods of recovery along the way. Retracing my steps, cleaning, doing something else, pacing furiously, crying, etc. Or I’ll check the […]
