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THERE IWAS UNDER M YROCK
Earlier this year, New York’s iconic Scholastic store in SoHo permanently closed. I never visited the store while it was open, but I got a glimpse of its history while visiting the small exhibit that...
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Flirtation
Rita Dove was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 1993 when she was just forty years old. By then, though, she had written a few novels and several collections of poetry, including Thomas and...
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Abandoned Men
Brooklyn Copeland is a young, prolific poet who has published individual poems in venues like Poetry Magazine and The New York Times. She also has several chapbooks and full length poetry collections...
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Better than a Great Song
Several years ago, British poet John Fuller wrote a poem with a bright future as a chart-topping pop song. Perhaps its catchy flow is due to the fact that it’s a strict villanelle, or perhaps it’s due...
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Fortune’s Cookies
A friend recently sent me an upbeat, effortless Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919) poem that I immediately liked. And then immediately didn’t know if I liked. The poem is from Ferlinghetti’s...
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Early Mid-Life Crisis
There is an undocumented age crisis that occurs in the early thirties. Indeed, the onset of this decade might mark the actual “coming of age.” Eighteen is still shrouded by the incredulous, protective...
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A Sudden Collapse of Ice
Poems can sometimes behave like short stories, like very short stories. They set the scene, bring the reader in and then leave them with an uncertain longing. In just fifteen lines, the poem below...
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Eyes on the Street
Perhaps Jane Jacobs’ most acclaimed contribution to urban studies in The Death and Life of Great American Cities is her “eyes on the street” theory. “[T]here must be eyes upon the street, eyes...
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Thoreau Bashing
Am I that unusual or touchy to think that “scum” is an unpleasant, if not vulgar, label to have squarely pinned to your back? In “Pond Scum” (The New Yorker, October 19th) Kathryn Schultz does just...
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Connecting the Dots
What triggers a Zeteo rumination? Sometimes — usually — it’s an item from the media or from a book I’m browsing. Sometimes it’s the flash in memory of a line of poetry or philosophy. Things beg for...
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Porn, then Poetry
If poetry and pornography could meet on the Web, what would it look like? Of course, [pornography and poetry] probably benefit [from the Internet] for different reasons: pornography because people...
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Whales, Meteors, Terrorists, Saviors
Herman Melville was mesmerized by a mysterious white whale. A new movie in town, In the Heart of the Sea, recounts the more or less true story of a whale ramming a ship in 1820. The Essex from...
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Lynch Mobs
Shortly after posting my previous week’s article about Donald Trump, fascism, and communal violence, the New York Times published footage of a woman being lynched in Kabul, Afghanistan. The preceding...
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Brains, Literature, Disposable Selves
The Self is Disposable, Isn’t It? Not for most of us for most of the time. But its reality can be brought into question. There are exotic cases of apparent persons who seem to lack a self....
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Affect, Irony, Idiom
Decide: Does Post-secular spirituality feature 1) posthuman ethics; 2) posthuman subjects; or 3) totalistic re-positioning I’ll read anything — almost. Once a month it’s my habit to browse stacks...
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Identity, Erikson, and the Third Phase of Life
I remember in the ’60s being fascinated by the writing of Erik Erikson. I’m not sure if he’s read much today. But there I was last week in the quiet of my new home, Portland, Maine, in the quiet of...
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Privacy and Power
Two weeks ago I wrote about the relationship between privacy and power, and how may of today’s spokespeople for the oppressed focus more on stopping surveillance in the name of privacy than daring to...
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Consumers, Apprentices, Failed Universities
I have no complaints about living in Maine. I find good music, good restaurants, good friends in the small city of Portland. I’ve taught inland and upstate in Bangor – just this side of Old Town,...
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Imagination, Rowling, Happiness, Carnival
Memorable lines from William Blake: Twofold, twofold always May God us keep From single vision And Newton’s sleep Imagination lets us see the world as other than a Newtonian assembly of spinning...
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In Favor of Fantasy
Fantasy has it rough. It bears a reputation of being trivial, flashy, adolescent, and entertainment-driven. Indeed, some fantasy is. But, such a judgment is unfair to good fantasy, which is none of the...
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