This past week I wrapped up the summer class I’ve been teaching (bittersweet, as my students were truly awesome this summer), finished the independent study I’ve been doing (at least provisionally – I need to keep revising the poems that came out of the study) , and sent contracts to all poets whose poems have [...]
Entries from June 2008
June 23, 2008
Lord Byron Sends His Love
Apparently, if you were madly in love with Lord Byron, the thing to do was to send him a lock of your hair. He was usually good enough to reciprocate, but he failed to tell his lady loves that the hair he sent in return was often HIS DOG’s. Very funny, Lord Byron. [...]
June 21, 2008
Drunken Begonias
Holland (Michigan) goes a bit crazy with tulips, and as part of their Tulip Time festival each year they plant thousands of tulips along miles of the city’s streets, which they designate as “Tulip Lane.” When the tulips are done, the city has an enormous flower giveaway, providing anyone who lives on Tulip Lane [...]
June 20, 2008
Eulogy for the Winnebago
Good ol’ Garrison Keiller has this “Eulogy for the Winnebago” in the Chicago Tribune. I’ve never been a huge fan of those things myself… bring on the banjos and front porches!
June 10, 2008
Politics and the Classroom
I often get annoyed with the comment threads on politically-minded articles, but I just spent a ridiculous amount of time engrossed in the comments following Stanley Fish’s “Politics and the Classroom: One More Try,” currently linked to the front page of The New York Times website. It’s a rebuttal of a rebuttal, and [...]
June 6, 2008
Video Homage to Henri
This came my way via my former professor Jack Ridl:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7ibPk37_U
As he put it, it’s “Zeeeee exeeeestential kittteeeeeee.”
June 4, 2008
Deal Breakers
Scanning The New York Times for the latest political hoopla, I came across an article called “Recipe Deal Breakers: When Step 2 is ‘Coral Pig’”.
I recommend it to my foodie and non-foodie friends alike. We all have a line, somewhere, where the demands of a recipe make us turn away from its promise of [...]
June 3, 2008
Michigan History
After reading Campbell McGrath’s Florida Poems, I decided to peruse a bit of Michigan history. My family (on my mother’s side) descends from Dutch settlers who came to Michigan in the 19th century. I’m moderately familiar with the history of their settling in Michigan, and have written on the subject a good deal, [...]
June 3, 2008
Campbell McGrath’s Florida Poems
I originally had planned on doing a “Midwest Poets” study this summer, but I’m glad I widened it (as suggested by my adviser) to a more general survey of poets for which “place” is a central concern.
I recently finished Campbell McGrath’s book Florida Poems, which felt to me like an embarrassment of “place poem” riches. [...]
