Tag Archives: language

Rimbaud and Verlaine

Posted on September 28, 2020 by JMN

The seventy-five persons interred in the French Pantheon include Voltaire, Rousseau, Dumas, Hugo and Malraux. None is there for poetry. (Victor Hugo was honored for his political attainments.) There is now a movement afoot to transfer the remains of Arthur … Continue reading →

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Late ‘Adamantine Crudeness’

Posted on September 26, 2020 by JMN

Roberta Smith faults Hauser & Wirth for “an exhibition of mostly bland self-portrait drawings showing the artist [Luchita Hurtado] as a simple outline or silhouette… redeemed by too few of her more intense acrylic paintings from the last two years…” … Continue reading →

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‘I Hate Men’ Two

Posted on September 10, 2020 by JMN

There’s more to Pauline Harmange, French author of I Hate Men, than met the eye of Ralph Zurmély, the gender equality ministry adviser who sought to prosecute her for incitement of gender-based violence. His ministry said “it appeared [he] had … Continue reading →

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Pen Pricks

Posted on September 9, 2020 by JMN

In certain Victorian novels, female authors paint a bleak picture of limited options available to women lacking means or family status; of a lonely and loveless existence, yet one lacking privacy and subject to uninvited comment; of a life peopled … Continue reading →

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‘Manlift’!

Posted on September 8, 2020 by JMN

The locale in which these paintings hang reminds me of the shed I inhabit on a smaller scale. The old grain tower retains “a wood, steel and rubber contraption ascending through a chute in the ceiling” with a sign reading: … Continue reading →

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Notes on Poetry from India (2)

Posted on September 7, 2020 by JMN

In part two of his 2007 essay about Indian poetry*, R. Parasarathy narrows his focus to contemporary poetry written in Tamil. He credits C. Subramania Bharati (1882-1921) with breaking free of received forms, notably in his Prose Poems, and inventing … Continue reading →

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Friday Morning

Posted on September 4, 2020 by JMN

I’m struggling. My remote interlocutor in life of the mind is keeping me afloat insofar as having a rational dialog with someone. But that dialog is private. Of the muchness on my mind, I’m conflicted as to which of it … Continue reading →

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The Gargoyles’ Grin

Posted on August 30, 2020 by JMN

In 1915, Wallace Stevens offered Harriet Monroe, founder of Poetry (the magazine), several poems that included Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock. “She returned them… finding them ‘recondite, erudite, provocatively obscure… all with ‘a kind of modern-gargoyle grin to them,’” writes Stevens … Continue reading →

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Shackles

Posted on August 28, 2020 by JMN

Jacob Blake, the Black resident of Kenosha, Wis., who was shot by a white police officer, is shackled to his hospital bed [my bolding]… [He] remains paralyzed from the waist down… The police were arresting Mr. Blake on Sunday afternoon … Continue reading →

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Poetry and Drawing

Posted on August 25, 2020 by JMN

The essay is “On Drawing” by poet Michael Burkard (Poetry*, July/August 2020). Mary Hackett was “a self-taught artist who spent much of the year in Provincetown [Massachusetts].” Michael Burkard writes of striking up a friendship with her while on an … Continue reading →

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