I’ve got a bunch of half-drafted posts and further topics to write about, but I think I’m going to go easy on the posting for the next little while. I need some time to quiet down and think. Among other things, I’ve just joined an unofficial poetry workshop comprised of MFA students, former MFA students, […]
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Amanda
Gosh. People are linking to my recent Simpsons post and my visitor traffic has gone way up. Hi, everyone who came here to read about the Bart Simpson Ph.D-taunting scene (including the person who got here by Googling "simpsons bookaccino"). Now I feel like I should be especially clever and witty for your benefit. But […]
languagehat draws our attention to a newly-coined word, "igry," which means "painfully embarrassed for or uncomfortable about someone else’s incredibly poor social behavior" (see also this Monkeyfilter thread). The concept of shame felt on behalf of another person, who should really be the one feeling the shame (but isn’t), interests me; I’ve been thinking about […]
Night Life I thought it was you but I couldn’t tell.It’s so hard, working with people, you want them allTo like you and be happy, but they get in the wayOf their own predilections, it’s like a stone Blocking the mouth of a cave. And when you say, come on let’sBe individuals reveling in our […]
I stole this link from BoingBoing, but 5ives (a.k.a. "Merlin’s Lists of Five Things") is hilarious. I’m simultaneously hooting with laughter and coveting the list-of-five idea. I’d post my own ("Five operatic arias I sing in the shower," "Five movie stars I find intensely irritating for no good reason," "Five things I have reportedly said […]
So it’s already time to apply for another lectureship next year, and I’m guiltily realizing how little alternative-career exploration I’ve gotten done this year. A dilemma has presented itself: apply for teaching next year and keep looking — or at least, tell myself I’ll keep looking — for other work; or, run for the nonacademic […]
From tonight’s episode of The Simpsons: [Marge, Bart, and Lisa go to their local "Bookaccino" superbookstore.] LISA: I’m going up to the fourth floor, where the books are!BART: I’m going to taunt the Ph.Ds! [Bart approaches the three workers at the espresso bar, all of whom wear glasses and bored expressions.] BART: Hey guys! I […]
I want a Marilyn Horne Zippo lighter! (I was just listening to a Met Opera broadcast intermission feature about her, from which I learned that both she and the Zippo are from Bradford, PA, hence the commemorative lighter.) It was Marilyn Horne, by the way, who described the standard roles for the operatic mezzo-soprano in […]
Found at my local library’s big semiannual used book sale today: Alice Fulton, Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of PoetryPaul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic FormHerbert Liebowitz, ed., Parnassus: Twenty Years of Poetry in ReviewJ. D. McClatchy, ed., The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry All together, they cost a grand total […]
What, though, is that happy cliché of literary criticism, a "minor" work? Surely not, prima facie, a work by a minor writer, since we’re told major writers produce their share. Yet if major writers produce minor works without losing their mark of heaven, doesn’t fairness dictate that minor writers can produce major works without losing […]