Literature
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Blather
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1 min read
Blather “is words. bunches of words, strewn about in a twisty tangly web of pontification, insight and nonsensical delight.” Exposing the intertwingularity of language. I used to love the smell of freshly-mowed grass. It smelled like barbecues at dusk. Mosquitoes, kids with chicken greased fingers butterflies, and Spring. The hot sun on my freckled face.
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Ted Kooser
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1 min read
Ted Kooser was just named the new U.S. Poet Laureate. Here is A Happy Birthday: This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride…
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Elevators demand poems
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1 min read
The The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms is a compilation from the journal that asserts “reading is the last refuge from the real-time epidemic. To that end, the selections gathered here are grouped by how long they offer escape from real time: waiting rooms need long stories, for example, while…
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Costing not less than everything
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1 min read
I’m rather tired of every amateur scientist weighing in with his or her opinion of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s destruction or the entire space program, so I’m reluctant to do the same here. But tonight I walked onto the subway, sat down, and in front of my eyes was this passage from Four Quartets by…
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Contract vs. Status writing
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1 min read
An attack on postmodern literature by Jonathan Franzen, which equates difficulty with high art. I see an analogy to design. The original article is offline in the New Yorker, an interview is online. ‘…I think it’s kind of a natural idea. As a student, you’re handed Milton or Shakespeare, you’re told that it’s great literature,…