Alan Macfarlane, on arranging books: If we are to understand these changing paradigms in the past, and the way they swing in the present, we should note that they seem to shadow political relations and the rate of economic progress. The general rule appears to be that in periods of rapid economic and technological growth, especially when this is linked to political dominance and expansion by a certain civilization, confidence rises and optimistic, ‘progressive’ and teleological theories dominate.
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John Wilkinson’s
Adages for Poetry StudentsChris Miller reviews Chaos and the Clean Line by Stephen Romer
AND Two Essays
by Alan WallSee also Garin Cycholl’s new review of Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard
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Audio archive: Two poems, with an audio track, from Heart Monologues by Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani | Daragh Breen’s Aural Triptych | Hayden Carruth reads Contra Mortem and Journey to a Known Place | Anthony Howell reads three new poems | James Laughlin reads Easter in Pittsburgh and five more | Peter Robinson reads Manifestos for a lost cause, Dreamt Affections, Blind Summits and Oblique Lights
Previous Serials
2011: Golden-beak in eight parts. By George Basset (H. R. Haxton).
2012: The Invention of the Modern World in 18 parts. By Alan Macfarlane.
2013: Helen in three long parts. By Oswald Valentine Sickert.
2016: The Survival Manual by Alan Macfarlane. In eight parts.
2018: After the Snowbird, Comes the Whale, by Tom Lowenstein.
LONDON
Readings in The Room: 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17 9AS – £5 entry plus donation for refreshments. All enquiries: 0208 801 8577
Poetry London: Current listings here.
Shearsman readings: 7:30pm at Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1. Further details here.NEW YORK
10 reliable poetry venues in NYC.
· The funeral of Isaac Albéniz
· Coleridge, poetry and the ‘rage for disorder’
· Otto Rank
· Patrons and toadying · Rejection before slips
· Cut with a dull blade
· Into the woods, everybody.
· Thought Leaders and Ted Talks
· How Mary Oliver ‘found love in a breathing machine.’
AND read here:
· James Thomson [B.V.]
A dilemma for educators:
Philosophy and the public impact.
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Michelene Wandor on Derek Walcott and the T.S. Eliot Prize.
.Nick Lowe: the true-blue Basher shows up for a friend.
More daily in
Anthony Howell: The new libertine in exile.
Kate Hoyland: Inventing Asia, with Joseph Conrad and a Bible for tourists.
Who is Bruce Springsteen? by Peter Knobler.
Martin Sorrell on John Ashbery’s illumination of Arthur Rimbaud.
The beauty of Quantitative Easing.
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Me, Gordon Brown and Equality of Opportunity.
Anthony O’Hear: Equality of opportunity is only equality of outcome one stage further back….Equality of opportunity is the politically acceptable face of egalitarianism, which pretends to allow us to enjoy equality in a social and political sense, while keeping the rewards we may get from any work, luck or talent we may do or have. Not surprisingly such a confused and confusing vision is at the heart of the ‘new’ Labour project, but what had come to irk me was that post-1997 (and possibly earlier) ‘equality of opportunity’ has come to be a central plank of nice (or ‘compassionate’) conservatism.