Just when I convince myself that Chicago isn’t the cultural backwater that people say it is, the Sunday Trib comes along and knocks my block off. This can usually be accomplished through just a glance at the front page of the Perspective section (I can’t usually bring myself to look further than that), which has recently featured such gems as…
Author: Timothy Yu
Two years ago, a friend I’d known since junior high went missing while visiting friends in Ohio. His car was found abandoned along a rural highway, but there was no sign of him. Earlier this week the police found some bones about a quarter mile from where his car was found, and they’ve just been identified as his. Because it…
And while we’re on the topic of bland eclecticism, here’s another relevant Poggioli tidbit: “A period having many styles has none…[M]ass cultures…take their styles where they find them–from cultures and societies different from theirs. In short, the absence of a style of its own is not exclusive to capitalism or socialism, but happens in any democratic society, whether it is…
Hey Eileen: So I’m wading through Renato Poggioli’s Theory of the Avant-Garde (yes, still) and I come across, believe it or not, a reference to Jose Garcia Villa! Okay, not a very nice one, but I thought you might be interested. “To the illusion that the arts were interchangeable and mutually corresponded, there was often added a childish belief that…
But, see, ending a poem with eggplant is okay.
Not to be the purple rain, Josh, but I have to say these aubergine-ending poems are still not working for me. Yeah, the idea of a blanket ban on a word is dumb, and just the kind of simultaneously high-handed and silly thing that would come out of the mouth of someone like McClatchy. But reading the poems Aubergine Nation…
MYOPIC POETRY SERIES — a weekly series of readings and poets’ talks Myopic Books in Chicago — Sundays at 7:00 / 1564 N. Milwaukee Avenue May Events Sunday May 2, “Talking about the Talk Poem” – John Beer Sunday May 9 – Rachel Levitsky Sunday May 16 – Elizabeth Hatmaker Sunday May 23 – April Sheridan and Simon Pettet Sunday…
Next year I’ll be teaching a course in American literature 1880-1960. A full-year course–woo-hoo! Nominate your favorite text for the syllabus now.
Tech help message of the day: When a student drops a course with the Registrar, they are disabled in that course site. However, they still appear as enrolled, just in a disabled state. Only system administrators can see a student in this disabled state.
Not that Poetry Espresso‘s further ventures have come to an end. They’ve just launched a new online journal, foam:e, edited by Angela Gardner and including a few poems by me as well as an international crew that includes Del Ray Cross, kari edwards, Michael Farrell, and Jill Jones.