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Monthly Archives: January 2011

On the Road to Pantisocracy.

Andrew Mitchell: There was the dinner, long after the break-up of their friendship, where both Wordsworth and Coleridge were present, one at either end of the dining table. Crabb Robinson eavesdropped on both conversations, Wordsworth was quoting his own poems, Coleridge was quoting Wordsworth.

Wilfrid Sheed: An ‘irresistibly quotable’ writer due for a revival.

I luckily discovered him last year when I came across an appreciative blog post by Allen Barra, who wrote, “No other critic approaches [Sheed’s] ability to synthesize the vast literature on a subject or to illuminate a writer’s oeuvre in a short starburst of words.”

The Case of the Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota.

[Timothy J.] Johnson has charge of what he describes as the world’s largest collection of material related to Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Event: The TS Eliot Prize Readings, London.

Simon Armitage, Annie Freud, John Haynes, Seamus Heaney, Pascale Petit, Robin Robertson, Fiona Sampson, Brian Turner, Derek Walcott and Sam Willetts are the shortlisted poets for this year’s prize.

Harold Hayes and his ideas, well-covered.

Harold Hayes and the ideas of the ’60s.

Ebooks: editing ‘editor’ out of the budget.

As Alberto Rollo, who directs the Italian fiction list for Feltrinelli, said, when I asked him about the editor’s role in Italy: “There is no e-book without asking ourselves what writing means, what editing means, and, yes, what publishing means.”

The future of ‘word-based narrative skills in portable multi-media devices.’

The expressive and editorial urge is too strong and word-smithery still remains at the heart and gateway to communications in all media.

The alchemy of indolence: ‘the transformation of Europe from forefront to backwater’.

Certainly, it does not seem to me that the future necessarily belongs to freedom as we have known it, and such as it was, and that therefore China must break apart under demands for personal liberty. It is a mistake, in my view, to assume that all people want to be free, in the sense of the American pioneers.

Did you hear the anekdoty about the Irish hiker who finally got the Russian joke?

The laughter was, it seemed clear, an essential component of the occasion, encouraging performers to embark on new jests and prompting the previously silent into speech.

Fellowship: International Writers Project at Brown.

[IWP/Brown University] – International Writers Project Fellowship Brown University seeks applications and nominations for the 2011-2012 International Writers Project Fellowship. The Fellowship provides institutional, intellectual and artistic support to writers who face personal danger, oppression, and/or threats to their livelihood in nations throughout the world.

Alan Sokal and the advanced science of foot-shooting.

Aronowitz and Ross had every reason to feel badly stung, no question.

Excerpt: (Eric) Ormsby on (Christopher) Ricks on (Bob) Dylan.

By ERIC ORMSBY [from Fine Incisions: Essays on Poetry and Place] – Whether writing on Tennyson, Eliot, Housman, Beckett, or many others, Christopher Ricks has always been a critic of exceptional learning and aplomb; that he has been generally given to a somewhat oblique, even eccentric angle of view — embarrassment in Keats, the subtleties […]

Rimbaud’s mad boat: Some thoughts on translating poetry.

Martin Sorrell: I wonder if purists work on the principle, which may or may not be unconscious, that there is one ideal translation for every poem, which, once attained, will put paid to the need for all others. On the other hand, is it that the translator who goes for versions is a relativist who can live with imperfection? Fabulous things have come out of the latter position. Wasn’t the King James Bible translated by a committee of relativists? Some purists say that if you want the truth, you’ll have to go back further, to the Hebrew and Greek.

An American city in ruins.

“Detroit in Ruins,” a selection of photographs of Detroit by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Nonsensing ourselves into oververbed oblivion.

No trend has been more obtrusive in recent years than the changing of nouns into verbs.