January 2012
1 post
W. W. Norton: The Obligation to Be Happy →
The Obligation to Be Happy
It is more onerous than the rites of beauty or housework, harder than love. But you expect it of me casually, the way you expect the sun to come up, not in spite of rain or clouds but because of them.
And so I smile, as if my own fidelity to sadness were a hidden vice— that downward tug on my mouth, my old suspicion that health and love are brief irrelevancies, no more...
December 2011
2 posts
“I pity nonsense, because until now it has been so neglected in the making of...”
– (Kurt Schwitters. from Merz)
“My recent feeling is that poetry is nothing more (or less) than the attempt to...”
– Brandon Shimoda
November 2011
2 posts
from The Stars That Come Before The Night
iv. / by Ana Bozicenic
If the sign on the door signals to the passer-by that the store is OPEN, does the other side of the sign tell those inside the store that the world is CLOSED? Close up shop, put world back in business. This poem is called The Mystery of Commerce.
October 2011
6 posts
WatchDetail of Louise Seamster’s amazing extra-illustrated book in action!
Watch“how weird it is that some people have normal lives and some people have very sad lives and then some people are Spike Jonze.” (thanks Louise)
“It used to be that if you wanted to be subversive and radical, you’d publish on...”
– Kenneth Goldsmith from this believer interview
“What are names for a sloping outside cellar door?” “What do you call the kind of...”
– HUMANITIES article on dialectology and the Dictionary of American Regional English.
September 2011
2 posts
“he finds poetry most beautiful when it’s quoted in prose—line breaks...”
– I interview Ben Lerner for the Poetry Society website.
August 2011
2 posts
“We know that having two thousand Facebook friends is not what it looks like. We...”
– From an article about Facebook by smartypants Zadie Smith
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almost all the way / w4m / 28 / A to Far Rockaway →
I wrote THIS fictional craigslist missed connection for Brett’s blog, Ships that Pass, and it got one hilarious, real response. Check it out.
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
1 post
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April 2011
5 posts
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Nothing pleases me
Nothing pleases me the traveler on the bus says—Not the radio or the morning newspaper, nor the citadels on the hills. I want to cry / The driver says: Wait until you get to the station, then cry alone all you want / A woman says: Me too. Nothing pleases me. I guided my son to my grave, he liked it and slept there, without saying goodbye / A college student says: Nor does anything please...
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Thank you, poetry.
noideasbut:
Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?
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March 2011
6 posts
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Reblogging this because its the easiest way for me...
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A Hole to See the Ocean Through →
Dispatches from a drifting polar vessel.
an incredible lyric essay by Ellie Ga in the newest edition of Triple Canopy. Also one of the most beautifully formatted pieces of writing I’ve ever seen on the internet!
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When did the poems get written?
“One of the most startling things about Frank in the period when I first knew him was his ability to write a poem when other people were talking, or even to get up in the middle of a conversation, get his typewriter, and write a poem, sometimes participating in the conversation while doing so. This may sound affected when I describe it, but it wasn’t so at all. The poems he wrote in...
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“When I think about blogging I think about this Bill Murray quote about how...”
– Molly Lambert, about making the stuff that later may turn out to be art
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“I have a lot of stolen goods in the poems. So much has been stolen—women’s...”
– From this amazing interview with my teacher Hoa Nguyen on Evening Will Come, a beautiful online publication I think I have raved about before….
February 2011
11 posts
1 tag
LetterMpress: A Virtual Letterpress on Your iPad →
check. it. out.
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“When the point of reading is remembering, you approach a text very differently...”
– Memory Athletes and the history of their sport in this week’s NYT
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More Michael Robbins! →
I have few legs. I sleep on meat.
I’d eat your bra—point being—in a heartbeat.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/01/12/090112po_poem_robbins#ixzz1EH8GxZBx
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Hey it's Michael Robbins discovery and... →
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Michael Robbins continues to impress! "The boys... →
My fish, fast and loose, shoot fish in a kettle.The boys like the girls who like heavy metal.On Sabbath, on Slayer, on Maiden and Venom,on Motörhead, Leppard, and Zeppelin, and Mayhem …
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I just discovered (in plain sight! in POETRY... →
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Gary Shteyngart? - w4m - 26 (L Train at 6th Ave) →
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“I’m both a lawyer and a poetry critic, so asking me to discuss this book would...”
– From this David Orr essay which, truth be told, I haven’t finished yet. It’s long.
January 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Speaking in code
As is the case with all my friends who work in the realm of numbers and computers, I harbor secret feelings that they may speak in binary code in their apartment (“010110?” “11010!”), and use English around me merely as a courtesy. When they do speak English, it’s a contemporary patois — a combination of real English and something out of a Vista manual.
W: So...
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“I know the adjective can be a nuisance, and the adverb clumsy. I’m a touch sick...”
– O go read this essay by C. D. Wright. It’s just been posted on the gorgeous new website Evening Will Come, which features a new essay each month in a lovely, storybook format.
December 2010
10 posts
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“So I went out into the street and breathed the air of Santiago with a vague...”
– Three amazing sentences from By Night In Chile by Roberto Bolano (trans Chris Andrews)
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Cento (from the 2009-07-16 Cable from Karl...
I was able to refocus the conversation
as we discussed commitment to continuing our close partnership
I outlined what the I seeking from the relationship:
meaningful progress, security, sanctuary, investment.
Karzai agreed there had been a dramatic reduction in efforts.
I welcomed such a statement, noting a recent engagement.
It was clear even at that time, trouble was brewing.
I took issue with a...
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Scientific Journalism Poem
When Wikileaks enters my dream, it doesn’t look
like the planet melting into a new formation.
Information is a cloud, which keeps spelling
the readable characters: the faces. Reporters say
Julian looks even paler and more tired. I understand this.
Bradley Manning in spending 23 hours a day in solitary
while his photo is everywhere, smiling. He’s been a model
detainee for seven months on a...
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Questions for the Cloud
(rough draft)
Q Is there some law against sharing something somebody tells you if somebody else would be interested?
Q What if every someone was a government?
Q Mister government, can I call you somebody, the way you insist on calling your every secret email a cable?
Q Is it a secret what makes the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network secret?
Q Are the routers underground with...
Great review of THE DORY READER in @Hydramag! →