Culture Industry

So I read two books the other day. One of them was Ian Hamilton's A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold (Basic Books, 20...

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means that the whole dreary spectacle of the end-of-year holidays is upon us. The holidays depress me; they ...

In the Commonwealth, it's Remembrance Day; in France and Belgium, Armistice Day. For some of us, it's Nigel Tufnel Day, remembering ...

So I'm slated to teach Our Fair Department's undergraduate "Intro to Literary Studies" course next year. It's got a bu...

About fourteen months ago, I rejoiced on this blog at reaching the halfway point of a long-term project, a series of short poems that short...

My odyssey thru the Library Edition of Ruskin continues. Yesterday I finished volume XIX, The Cestus of Aglaia and The Queen of the Air, wit...

[The Staunton Blackfriars Playhouse] I wonder if the blog hasn't been languishing lately. Certainly there hasn't been much spare tim...

The 750 Words stairmaster has had good effects; for the past week & a half, I've turned out well over 750 words a day. Now whether ...

Like everyone else, I've been reading Jeff Nunokawa's "notes" – brief essays, really – on Facebook, & with much enjoym...

I'm in the process – have been for a year or so now, I guess – of extending/expanding my "scholarly base," of stretching out f...

Mulberry (Tupelo P, 2006) and This Nest, Swift Passerine (Tupelo P, 2009), Dan Beachy-Quick The silkworm, the larval form of Bombyx mori ,...

Tangles of administrative stuff these days. Once upon a time – well, maybe until 5 or 6 years ago – because I am indeed a slow, slow learner...

So there's this dream I used to have: I'm at this concert, some band I'm totally into – Hüsker Dü, or Mekons, or Oysterband, wha...

I'm off my stride, in all sorts of ways. Here we are four weeks into the semester, & I haven't really settled into my classes, n...

Greensward , Cole Swensen (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) A sumptuous, beautifully designed & illustrated volume with which I'll have t...

A few recent publications, just for the aitch-ee-double-toothpicks of keeping the CV up to date: •a review of Marjorie Perloff's Unorigi...

So I was bemoaning my lack of narrative memory to another academic friend, bitching about how I can't remember plots & characters fr...

from "The Testament of a Man Forbid" This Beauty, this Divinity, this Thought, This hallowed bower and harvest of delight Wh...

[Slide #1: The Turbot] We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body: now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly; it is a prov...

Here's Dan Chaon , who teaches fiction writing at Oberlin: Occasionally, I have students who want to be rock stars. They have started a ...