Léon Guérin, La Morale en histoires, 1842. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. When a book leaves me feeling vaguely ambivalent, the would-be-writer me should probably ask why; was it something about the book’s style, the subject matter, something else or both or more that had me finish it without...

Ines Zgnoc/Amazone 7, The Different View. CC BY-SA 3.0 image via Wikimedia Commons. She wasn’t the first, of course, to put the thought into words, but Laura (Riding) Jackson asserted pretty clearly that if you have to explain what a poem is about or is doing, you might as well be writing prose; you can’t say a poem...

The Outsiders in 1966. Public domain image courtesy KLRA Beat and Wikimedia Commons. Last night, I watched the first episode of Art21, which featured a bit on Louise Bourgeois—and then this morning, found David Byrne tossing out an aside about her in Bicycle Diaries. I love that sort of coincidence. But it was one...

Theo van Doesburg, "Base de la peinture concrète," Art Concret no. 1 (April 1930). Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. I started wondering a few months ago whether anyone was writing poetic and/or artistic manifestoes anymore. The last I could think of, before the brief Covid-era efflorescence of statements...

Hermann Hesse looking serious. CC BY-SA 3.0 NL image courtesy Dutch National Archives and Wikimedia Commons. Two weeks away from the ol’ blog felt especially long, trapped as I was in a van with people half my age who were shit-talking nonstop. When we pulled to a halt in front of the tourist shop in Hooker, OK—town...

J.-B. Madou, Le bon conseil (Good Advice), 1871. Public domain image courtesy loki 11 and Wikimedia Commons. If the title of a book a friend recently gave me was intended to be provocative, that intention surely succeeded for yours truly—because the assertion that Life’s too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious...

Co. Dublin, 1954. Courtesy National Library of Ireland on The Commons. Image with no restrictions via Wikimedia Commons. Marcel Bénabou tells us about the way his younger self pondered writing a grand epic which, centered upon his family, would also depict the history of the Moroccan Jewish community. He was well...

Colorado State University Libraries. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. I’ve written before about what I’ll call my ambivalence about genealogical research—or rather, how it often gets presented in the US American context, as a tool of instant and heartening connection to a past and its actors, of...

Gigi Ibrahim, Consumerism. CC BY 2.0 image via Wikimedia Commons. In lieu of a real post this week, I’ll offer highlights from the past few days, which has involved attempting to keep up with class assignments while embarking on a work-related road trip. 1. Evidence of the fact that I’ve reached the end of my rope...

John Boyd, Argonauts Rowing Club Junior eight-man boat ca. 1925. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. When back in the fifties, Louse Bogan “asked a group of students, recently, to name some definite bodily rhythm which might illustrate mankind’s sense of time, and with which a definite pleasure might be said...

T. S. Eliot expounds; Lord David Cecil wears a poker face. Public domain photograph taken by Lady Ottoline Morrell via Wikimedia Commons. Maybe it’s inevitable, when you read a lot of poetry criticism, to come across discussions of T. S. Eliot somewhere in the mix. And Hugh Kenner’s and Guy Davenport’s delicious...

Harald Slott-Møller, Spring. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. Well, it’s spring break, and none too soon—because friends, I am exhausted. Attempting to keep afloat in an increasingly difficult class filled with boisterous youth, finishing a first manuscript draft and submission paperwork and getting it in...