Close Calls With Nonsense

The onetime Pacific NW fanzine writer and record-label creator Nancy Ostrander has a great blog, with vast swaths of indiepop content: if the term indiepop means something to you, as it has long meant something to me, check it out.

I’m in the current PN Review, number 190, describing the supposed differences between British and American poetry since the 1960s, with examples from Denise Riley, Peter Riley, Alison Brackenbury, Robert Minhinnick, Greta Stoddart, and other poets you probably haven’t read if you live in the United States, which is part of the point. The essay has generated at least one fascinating piece of hate mail; if you’re a current subscriber you might be able to read it online.

Ange Mlinko is in the last-but-one London Review of Books, making a brilliantly careful case for Barbara Guest.

Harvard has made the very defensible decision to fill up, and then leave alone for a bit, this big hole in the ground.

Nathan told us a story yesterday about the Angry Orchestra, which plays angry orchestral music all the time: the conductor, and all the musicians, are frogs, and all of them have the same name, Huckleberry, which might explain why the conductor gets so angry. I’m now seeking recommendations– seriously– for music the Angry Orchestra might play: that’s kid-appropriate classical or avant-garde, ideally with unusual instruments.

I should be correcting yet more proofs, but I’m fascinated instead by this sheepish site.