Close Calls With Nonsense

Whatever you’re doing, stop doing it; whatever you’re reading, stop reading it, and look at the essay by Ange Mlinko in the current issue of Poetry. It is an essay I know I could never have written, and not only because “father” doesn’t mean what “mother” means (though that too). Nonetheless, it’s in some sense an essay I have long been trying, and always failing, to write, and not only because it describes some of my favorite not-yet-world-famous poets and poems.

If you are a parent yourself (or, hey, just someone who sometimes tries to get people to do stuff that they inexplicably won’t do: a teacher, for instance) you might also appreciate this explanation of how to get people to do stuff. Psychological research: useful, no?

Maybe not so useful, but fun for me to write: I’m in the new London Review of Books on the new D. A. Powell. John Freeman turns in his own vividly laudatory review of the same book for the L.A. Times. Dan Pritchard delivers a mixed verdict at The Critical Flame.