Arts & Society

To carve a face

by Daniel Silliman Art

To carve a face

By Daniel Silliman

Cut triangles with the tip of your knife for eyes, pairs of triangles on each side of each eye. Connect them with thin, arching lines, cutting a curl of wood away, leaving a circle remaining, a mound, a pupil, inside. Practice until you have a whole boards of eyes.

Nov
07
2010
Thumbnail image for To carve a face

Cut triangles with the tip of your knife for eyes, pairs of triangles on each side of each eye. Connect them with thin, arching lines, cutting a curl of wood away, leaving a circle remaining, a mound, a pupil, inside. Practice until you have a whole boards of eyes.

Empathy, Cultural Dialogue, and Dead White Men

by Brian Chappell Arts & Society

Empathy, Cultural Dialogue, and Dead White Men

By Brian Chappell

“Bloody hell, no! I want to study dead white men!”

Nov
04
2010
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“Bloody hell, no! I want to study dead white men!”

Election Day Interregnum

by Daniel Silliman Fiction

Election Day Interregnum

By Daniel Silliman

Nixon went down to the beach and sat in the sand and waited. The waves came in, the waves went out, and he sat there in his suit and waited.

Nov
02
2010
Thumbnail image for Election Day Interregnum

Nixon went down to the beach and sat in the sand and waited. The waves came in, the waves went out, and he sat there in his suit and waited.

Jazz, Workshop, Fake books, & Misremembering

by Joe Weil Music

Jazz, Workshop, Fake books, & Misremembering

By Joe Weil

By the shores of gitchee goomy, / Stood the noble Hiawatha / quoting from the other shore: / Only this and nothing more.

Nov
02
2010
Thumbnail image for Jazz, Workshop, Fake books, & Misremembering

By the shores of gitchee goomy, / Stood the noble Hiawatha / quoting from the other shore: / Only this and nothing more.

Andrei Tarkovsky and the Visionary Experience

by Stewart K. Lundy Art

Andrei Tarkovsky and the Visionary Experience

By Stewart K. Lundy

Andrei Tarkovsky made an important film called Andrei Rublev, about a doubting monk, Russia’s greatest iconographer. The film feels very much like Bergman, from whom much of Tarkovsky’s style emerged. Like Bergman’s Seventh Seal, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev is a slow-paced journey with monks, holy idiots, existential discourse, and symbolic animals.

Oct
31
2010
Thumbnail image for Andrei Tarkovsky and the Visionary Experience

Andrei Tarkovsky made an important film called Andrei Rublev, about a doubting monk, Russia’s greatest iconographer. The film feels very much like Bergman, from whom much of Tarkovsky’s style emerged. Like Bergman’s Seventh Seal, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev is a slow-paced journey with monks, holy idiots, existential discourse, and symbolic animals.

On Gene Tanta’s “Critical Introduction to Unusual Woods.”

by Brooks Lampe Academia

On Gene Tanta’s “Critical Introduction to Unusual Woods.”

By Brooks Lampe

Even though both the form and content of Gene Tanta’s work are particular to his Romanian-immigrant experience, he insists that his poetry is accessible to everyone. His poetry, he says, exists both as aesthetic objects and political propaganda. This is absolutely true about all poetry, not just his own. Inevitably, literary criticism will come to see that literature is always both.

Oct
30
2010
Thumbnail image for On Gene Tanta’s “Critical Introduction to Unusual Woods.”

Even though both the form and content of Gene Tanta’s work are particular to his Romanian-immigrant experience, he insists that his poetry is accessible to everyone. His poetry, he says, exists both as aesthetic objects and political propaganda. This is absolutely true about all poetry, not just his own. Inevitably, literary criticism will come to see that literature is always both.

Joe Weil’s Must Have Books (Towards a Different Kind of Workshop, Part II)

by Joe Weil Academia

Joe Weil’s Must Have Books (Towards a Different Kind of Workshop, Part II)

By Joe Weil

Some days in a writing workshop should be like rainy days with a coloring book.

Oct
23
2010
Thumbnail image for Joe Weil’s Must Have Books (Towards a Different Kind of Workshop, Part II)

Some days in a writing workshop should be like rainy days with a coloring book.

Is Democracy Incompatible with the Humanities?

by Micah Towery Academia

Is Democracy Incompatible with the Humanities?

By Micah Towery

Humanities programs aren’t being attacked because the voters are cretinous philistines (though we poets & writers prefer to stroke our own egos in thinking so). The humanities are suffering an identity crisis and are being picked off as the weakest competitors for state funding.

Oct
15
2010
Thumbnail image for Is Democracy Incompatible with the Humanities?

Humanities programs aren’t being attacked because the voters are cretinous philistines (though we poets & writers prefer to stroke our own egos in thinking so). The humanities are suffering an identity crisis and are being picked off as the weakest competitors for state funding.

More Construction Notes

by THEthe Poetry Blog Editors Technology

More Construction Notes

By THEthe Poetry Blog Editors

Just a few things to notice about the site redesign.

Oct
14
2010

Just a few things to notice about the site redesign.

Outing and Demonizing

by Joe Weil Sexuality

Outing and Demonizing

By Joe Weil

I don’t believe in “blessings” in disguise. I don’t believe that all that doesn’t kill me, strengthens me. I believe I was murdered emotionally. I believed that an already severe sadness was aggravated by being taunted relentlessly. This kid who was outed without his permission, who was exposed for the “entertainment” value of the reality TV culture is not merely an instance of gay bashing. He is a test of our failure not to torture. He is a victim of our pro-exposure, lack of empathy, sociopathic contempt for privacy or kindness. I keep his picture on my desk. I look at him every day.

Oct
12
2010

I don’t believe in “blessings” in disguise. I don’t believe that all that doesn’t kill me, strengthens me. I believe I was murdered emotionally. I believed that an already severe sadness was aggravated by being taunted relentlessly. This kid who was outed without his permission, who was exposed for the “entertainment” value of the reality TV culture is not merely an instance of gay bashing. He is a test of our failure not to torture. He is a victim of our pro-exposure, lack of empathy, sociopathic contempt for privacy or kindness. I keep his picture on my desk. I look at him every day.

What’s Your Style Book of Choice?

by Micah Towery Academia

What’s Your Style Book of Choice?

By Micah Towery

I followed Strunk religiously until I read Geoffrey Pullum’s extensive bitchfest in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Strunk & White, and in recent years I have reconsidered my devotion.

Oct
08
2010
Thumbnail image for What’s Your Style Book of Choice?

I followed Strunk religiously until I read Geoffrey Pullum’s extensive bitchfest in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Strunk & White, and in recent years I have reconsidered my devotion.

The Inward Soul: Dickinson and St. Theresa of Avila

by Joe Weil Aesthetics

The Inward Soul: Dickinson and St. Theresa of Avila

By Joe Weil

There is an inwardness so vast, so total, that it has a true integrity—not the pretentiousness of artistic temper, not the vanity of professional mysticism, not the neurosis of social anxiety disorder, but a forthrightness, an honorable, hourly withdrawal from the world that seems, for lack of a better word—ecstatic.

Oct
05
2010
Thumbnail image for The Inward Soul: Dickinson and St. Theresa of Avila

There is an inwardness so vast, so total, that it has a true integrity—not the pretentiousness of artistic temper, not the vanity of professional mysticism, not the neurosis of social anxiety disorder, but a forthrightness, an honorable, hourly withdrawal from the world that seems, for lack of a better word—ecstatic.

LOLcatspeak, pt. 2? The Internet of Babel

by Micah Towery Language

LOLcatspeak, pt. 2? The Internet of Babel

By Micah Towery

I tend to believe that we don’t realize that technology is (always already?) an assumption about the world (as one philosopher called it “an account of the good”), not only a tool. Ironically, this writer is lamenting the disappearance of languages via the internet, which has become battering ram of English domination. The more I read and learn, the more I think that questions of technology and how man relates to nature are primary questions (not economics, race, sexuality, etc.—in many ways, the controversies over these can be directly traced to questions of technology).

Oct
01
2010
Thumbnail image for LOLcatspeak, pt. 2? The Internet of Babel

I tend to believe that we don’t realize that technology is (always already?) an assumption about the world (as one philosopher called it “an account of the good”), not only a tool. Ironically, this writer is lamenting the disappearance of languages via the internet, which has become battering ram of English domination. The more I read and learn, the more I think that questions of technology and how man relates to nature are primary questions (not economics, race, sexuality, etc.—in many ways, the controversies over these can be directly traced to questions of technology).

The Story of English and LOLcats

by Micah Towery Film and TV

The Story of English and LOLcats

By Micah Towery

Now for a spin on the story of English from the internet age…LOLcats. In particular, the LOLcat Bible Translation Project. Many linguists depend upon the work of Bible translators deployed around the world in remote (to us, at least) regions of the world. I happen to know a man who worked as a Bible translator and created the only existing dictionary in the world for his regional dialect. Concerns about dictionaries (and their purpose) aside, the LOLcats Translation begs a question: is LOLcats a true pidgin English? It has a history, it has its own grammar and rules, and now it has its own Bible.

Oct
01
2010
Thumbnail image for The Story of English and LOLcats

Now for a spin on the story of English from the internet age…LOLcats. In particular, the LOLcat Bible Translation Project. Many linguists depend upon the work of Bible translators deployed around the world in remote (to us, at least) regions of the world. I happen to know a man who worked as a Bible translator and created the only existing dictionary in the world for his regional dialect. Concerns about dictionaries (and their purpose) aside, the LOLcats Translation begs a question: is LOLcats a true pidgin English? It has a history, it has its own grammar and rules, and now it has its own Bible.

Towards a Different Kind of Workshop

by Joe Weil Academia

Towards a Different Kind of Workshop

By Joe Weil

I am not the expert teacher here, but the experienced learner, the one who has a love for poetry and gets excited by weird things like grammatical ambiguity, or how the poet used the weather to suggest a mood.

Sep
30
2010
Thumbnail image for Towards a Different Kind of Workshop

I am not the expert teacher here, but the experienced learner, the one who has a love for poetry and gets excited by weird things like grammatical ambiguity, or how the poet used the weather to suggest a mood.

More about McLuhan and the Poetic Line

by Micah Towery Poetry and Poetics

More about McLuhan and the Poetic Line

By Micah Towery

When McLuhan described linearity (I think he actually used the term lineality…not sure if there’s a difference? Spell check doesn’t recognize the latter, if that means anything!), I couldn’t help but think about the poetic line and the way it is changing. As print culture (and hence the divorce made by the phonetic alphabet) ends, we move from the line, back to the field, back to non-linear, acoustic space.

Jul
10
2010
Thumbnail image for More about McLuhan and the Poetic Line

When McLuhan described linearity (I think he actually used the term lineality…not sure if there’s a difference? Spell check doesn’t recognize the latter, if that means anything!), I couldn’t help but think about the poetic line and the way it is changing. As print culture (and hence the divorce made by the phonetic alphabet) ends, we move from the line, back to the field, back to non-linear, acoustic space.

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