Of Elsewhere
I think — I am not sure, but I think — Wallace Stevens is one of my favorite poets, up there with Blake and Dickinson (a various lot!). Perhaps it is silly to have a favorite poet I can often understand only with help (when I get the help, though, it’s so exciting). And this […]
I’ll keep it quick today, because I am riding a wave of Evernostian inspiration, but: my Redbubble account is now live! For those of you who don’t know, Redbubble sells merchandise printed with artists’ work (tee shirts, masks, dresses, bath mats — all sorts of things!); it’s free to me and I make 20% off […]
I’m back, ish. I fell behind on my reading and even further behind on my writing about it during quarantine (I got absorbed in fiction projects again). Still, I’ve read some good books, both virtuous and fun, and I hope to write a bit about what I’ve read as well as my projects. I left […]
Two more books down, though they’re something of a detour from my plan…. I reread Charles Williams’ Descent Into Hell, which I’ve written about here and here, but before that I read Sera Beak’s Red, Hot & Holy, which was a strange and strangely rewarding experience. I’ll write a bit here about the juxtaposition of […]
I haven’t read John Gardner’s fiction, though I have a copy of Grendel now (a ratty, cheap used copy from the bookstore where I work, with this sublimely horrible blurb: “…warm, friendly, compassionate….a kind of Medieval King Kong!”), but I really enjoy his writing advice. This book is no exception. I won’t be able to […]
This 1961 edition of a selection of Dickinson’s poetry was lovely — rewarding — and a lot: 321 pages of plot or argument draw a reader through, while 321 pages of poetry are probably meant to be sampled, not read cover-to-cover over a few weeks. I may have mentioned this before, but, if not, let […]
You may recall I wrote at some length about William Blake’s Four Zoas, so I’ll keep this fairly brief: I just read the whole shebang from start to finish in a few days! I find completing two books in a week, even if one (the Blake) is only 100 pages long, an auspicious beginning to […]
As my first book of the year, I read Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just. I am very glad I read it and I liked it a lot — though, as Scarry says about beauty itself, I find it thought-provoking rather than (simply) true; and the beauty Scarry works to embody and describe is […]
Hello! With all apologies for my continued absence (I’ve been hard at work on my projects….), I am back, I hope, for real, though promises are dangerous. First, a brief update: last year, after my poetry class, I undertook an ambitious summer plan that worked tolerably well, and finally worked a lot on Evernost, which […]
First, I enjoyed the poetry workshop a huge amount, and I’ve learned a lot, and, possibly even more important, I was motivated to work very hard on poems with a definite audience in mind: the process of trying to translate what I like to write about into something that other people will like too, the […]
Of Elsewhere 