Tag Archives: reading

And One More Thing…

Posted on November 17, 2025 by JMN

I adore compression and spareness, and Infinite Jest, finished at 7:29PM on 11-16-25, is bloated and prolix. It tells you something that it’s a novel with footnotes. Hundreds of them. During the periods when I ground my teeth, it tracked … Continue reading →

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Review of ‘Infinite Jest’ (Don’t Worry, I’m Jesting!)

Posted on November 9, 2025 by JMN

I haven’t finished listening to the novel on my new Audible subscription, but I see no reason not to review it. It’s twenty-seven Titanics of insanity steaming with breakneck slowness over an eternity of pages towards a who-knows-what species of … Continue reading →

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How Translations ‘Fail’

Posted on October 27, 2025 by JMN

(Update, Oct. 26, 2025. Some time after writing what’s below I’ve encountered Mitch Teemley’s citation of Psalm 37:23. What’s a good word for how the Quran and the Bible interact? I’ve no expertise in either, but I see signs of … Continue reading →

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A Poem Is a Sketch

Posted on October 9, 2025 by JMN

Disconcert. Defamiliarize. Distort. Disrupt. Draw, Stardust! A friend I’ll nickname Stardust, avid prose reader, has remarked that relatively few people have a taste for poetry nowadays. I surmise it’s always been so, even in this or that era when <name-your-Great-Poet> … Continue reading →

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Sean Singer and ‘Bird’

Posted on September 29, 2025 by JMN

Often as not a poem gives me a right old drubbing while stealing my lunch money, cackling in cold delight all the while. Instead of picking up my Big Chief tablet, shrugging and slinking back to class, I squeal like … Continue reading →

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This Is Now (Again)

Posted on September 1, 2025 by JMN

“He’s also piercingly smart about his place as a white observer in a Black art form.” (Jayson Greene, on Daniel Levin Becker) Before you-know-who was president, I encountered something called Twitter, ran with it for maybe six weeks. That was … Continue reading →

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‘A Wild and Capacious Art’

Posted on August 3, 2025 by JMN

“Poetry belongs to all who write, read, sing and sign it.” (Adrian Matejka) ”A wild and capacious art” is how Adrian Matejka describes it. The editor of Poetry knows whereof he speaks, though I would hazard that other art forms … Continue reading →

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Until We Are They?

Posted on July 26, 2025 by JMN

“The evolution of language always encounters resistance, and sometimes outrage.” (John McWhorter) A poem by Danez Smith in Poetry, July-August 2025, titled “They/Them” should be read whole but, to be brief, starts: said short: i feel more like a stud. … Continue reading →

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‘Deep Blue Scrap of Lie’

Posted on July 24, 2025 by JMN

There’s a cleanly spoken, elegant poem in Poetry, May 2025, that lingers in the mind’s eye. It’s called “Infinity Pool” by Vona Groarke.  You flirt with an arresting occurrence in the liminal paralysis of semi-sleep. It nags. If not worded … Continue reading →

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‘I Came Into the World Very Young’

Posted on July 16, 2025 by JMN

I discovered Satie long ago through Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, and liked the music immediately. I thought of him as a “minor” composer, and I was drawn to perceived niche tastes. I crave even now the unmoored feeling that his music … Continue reading →

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