Now it can be told: though my title won’t change till this summer, Harvard’s committees have met and decided to keep me around here. Suddenly I’m able to sleep well.
I’m not sure it’s a poem, but it’s fun, and it’s hard to forget: Silliman links to a video-poem composed entirely of homonyms. It’s probably time for me to read Riddley Walker, speaking of homonyms; quite soon I will. Right now I’m in the middle of this novel and this novel, and the usual cluster of new collections of poems.
I’m in the NYTBR on Marie Ponsot. There are very fine poems in that book.
Jordan Davis gets meta for Lemon Hound. Good reading. He also responds to me (thanks!): but I don’t think I ever said (contra Jordan) that blogs couldn’t host serious literary criticism, or if I did, I no longer think so. What I think now (and probably thought back then) is that blogs are ideal for tasks that have to be performed immediately if they are to be done well at all– e.g. in-the-moment reporting and instant reactions to real-time events, as in life-writing (online diaries), sports-writing (we want to know about this week’s games) and politics (by the way, Howard Dean now supports the Senate bill– see what a difference two days make?). Literary criticism, even reviewing, at its best isn’t usually so in-the-moment and doesn’t need to be: that’s why I had a bit of a hard time on Harriet, even though I was happy to blog there last year.
The new Terrance Hayes just came in the mail. If it’s as good as his last two books, it’s going to be very, very good.