PolyArchive

Berryman W.S. Merwin I will tell you what he told me in the years just after the war as we then called the second world war don’t lose your arrogance yet he said you can do that when you’re older lose it too soon and you may merely replace it with vanity just one time […]

It started, as many things do, with Metafilter. Someone posted a link to a story which quickly engaged me (at one of those thesis-work moments during which I want nothing more than to be distracted), about a blogger facing down her stalker. It was a gripping and well-written story–I read every part in one sitting. […]

How many of us can date a picture to the decade, just by looking at the photo’s characteristics and processing? A fairly large number, I would think. Each generation of cameras has corresponded to the aesthetics of its time, the ethos, even the color palette. Think of the small, perfectly square photos of the minimalist […]

A quote of the day on my email header today: “Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.”–Edgar Cayce. I have to disagree. I think dreams are tonight’s questions to yesterday’s (or last year’s, or 10 years ago’s) answers. And we must always question the answers, my darlings. Even if we are not mighty mighty or […]

Sure on This Shining Night James Agee Description of Elysium There: far, friends: ours: dear dominion: Whole health resides with peace, Gladness and never harm, There not time turning, Nor fear of flower of snow Where marbling water slides No charm may halt of chill, Air aisling the open acres, And all the gracious trees […]

“President Philip (who is without a doctoral degree and who has little if any experience teaching or researching)” via The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives – NYTimes.com. GRRRR. This makes me so angry, partly because SUNY Albany has a good Russian program (one of their faculty co-wrote my favorite textbook series, Nachalo), and partly […]

I know this is going around rather rapidly, but just in case you haven’t seen it… Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo. via Danny & Annie on Vimeo.

Introduction to Collected Poems (1938) E.E. Cummings (wrenched from a geocities site in the depths of the Wayback Machine) I N T R O D U C T I O N The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople– it’s no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and […]

I have been writing. Just in very small form. 7-7-10: Raw temptation of sprinklers never fades with age… Wet grass loves bare feet 7-1-10: Red-winged blackbird dreams, Bicycles, reeds in ditches, was this history? 6-16-10: Blame music, you could never live up to sacred memories of you June 3, 2010: ‘Late submission’ Priorities change. Scarlett […]

I had the first couple of lines, with their curious, beautiful syntax, stuck in my head today. I struggled to recall where they were from. Shakespeare, obviously, but where? One of the plays with end-rhymed soliloquies? That narrows it, but contextually, they could fit in many places. Shakespeare is full of suitable matches. I had […]

any open show of affection is in bad taste. « Me against them. Girls, we’ve been doing it all wrong. And this book was here the whole time… [Thanks Alexis!]

The Woman That Had More Babies Than That Wallace Stevens I An acrobat on the border of the sea Observed the waves, the rising and the swell And the first line spreading up the beach; again, The rising and the swell, the preparation And the first line foaming over the sand; again, The rising and […]

Plaint Theodore Roethke Day after somber day I think my neighbors strange; In Hell there is no change. Where’s my eternity Of inward blessedness? I lack plain tenderness. Where is the knowledge that Could lead me to my God? Not on this dusty road Or afternoon of light Diminished by the haze Of late November […]

Amazon.com Widgets

For all the Russian literature I’ve studied, and the amount of time I devote to Blok, my strongest emotional attachments are to American poets (and the occasional Briton). I know I’ve posted plenty of Roethke here in the past, and truth be told, I should have done an English master’s and written about him. Would […]