Tag Archives: poetry

Iambo-Pentametricism

Posted on October 30, 2020 by JMN

ApothegmHow does a country get to see the backof a leader who has only affront?(JMN) Iambo-Pentametricization of Codified Peroration“So we have many exciting things thatwe will be announcing over the nexteight weeks, I would say things that nobodyhas even contemplated, … Continue reading →

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‘A Fond Infected Look’

Posted on October 8, 2020 by JMN

A novelist’s prose can crowd poetry turf with an ineffability that thwarts paraphrase. Of his mother a protagonist says: “Ten minutes she will spend in the kitchen working with her swift cat-efficiency, then out and away with the children, surging … Continue reading →

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A Hopper Reveal

Posted on September 30, 2020 by JMN

It’s interesting to see instances of a teenage Edward Hopper’s copying of other artists, the more so as it touches on the reputation he cultivated “as an artist whose innate genius allowed him to emerge on the scene without a … Continue reading →

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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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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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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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Notes on Poetry from India (1)

Posted on September 6, 2020 by JMN

In the September 2007 edition of Poetry, R. Parthasarathy edited an “Indian Poetry Portfolio” accompanied by his essay titled “Indian Poetry Today.” I note salient points from that essay here. India’s National Academy of Letters (Sahitya Akademi) recognizes twenty-four languages, … 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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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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