Tag Archives: style

Poetry Barasingha

Posted on May 30, 2020 by JMN

My dog with the candy name goes off at the drop of a hat. When the washing machine rumbles a cycle-change from the tenebrosity of its cave, I wish I could say Taffy ululates, but it would overdress the event. … Continue reading →

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Nothing Different

Posted on May 17, 2020 by JMN

I turn over and savor a treasured exchange: — “What do you need from me right now?”— “Nothing different.” How perfect is such an answer? What’s needed starts with nothing. I’ve aplenty of it! “Different” turns it just so much, … Continue reading →

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Peace, Love, Productivity

Posted on May 16, 2020 by JMN

Mr. Delsarte moved out West for a time in the 1970s, painting murals in and around Laguna Beach, Calif., living on a commune and settling in Arizona… Long after he went back East, leaving his hippie days behind him, Mr. … Continue reading →

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Cutting Slack

Posted on May 15, 2020 by JMN

Rather than fostering some new sense of civic unity, the virus is just as likely to worsen inequality further [my bolding]. (Farhad Manjoo, “San Francisco Beat the Virus. But It’s Still Breaking My Heart,” NYTimes, 5-13-20) Calling out infelicities of … Continue reading →

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The Secret Life of Fruit

Posted on May 14, 2020 by JMN

The ending of a poem I’ve read recently goes thus: On the plus, foods in hispanophone kitchens taste richer when spoken. zanahoria for carrot. melocotón names peach. many cubans say fruta bomba for papaya. mitt romney once claimed he loves … Continue reading →

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The Troubling Arousal

Posted on May 11, 2020 by JMN

While I resist drawing lines between pornography and art, if forced to offer a distinction I might say that pornography, like propaganda, wants us to feel a single thing. Art is made of contraries, of ambivalence and ambiguity; it never … Continue reading →

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“Play Like You Don’t Know How”

Posted on May 9, 2020 by JMN

“… Play like you don’t know how to play guitar.” That’s the instruction that John McLaughlin recalls Miles Davis giving him. It was on the occasion of his being pressed precipitately into service to collaborate in Davis’s milestone album “Bitches … Continue reading →

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So Playfully Valorized Seriousness

Posted on May 6, 2020 by JMN

[Wayne Koestenbaum] valorizes the intellectual seriousness of Sontag, and of the poet and translator Richard Howard, but also confesses his attraction to idleness and lassitude. Books are fine and good, but have you tried sex, or doughnuts? So this review … Continue reading →

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Blurred Slur

Posted on April 23, 2020 by JMN

Language is awash in slurs: racist, ethnist, nationalist, sexist, ageist, classist, occupationist, sexual orientationist, “ism-ist,” and so on and so forth. The human race is a slurring race. I’m far from wishing to resurrect offensive words from their just entombment. … Continue reading →

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Move Fast and Fix Things

Posted on April 19, 2020 by JMN

In late January Kara Swisher paid tribute to Clay Christensen, who died that month at age 67. Christensen was a Harvard professor of management whose seminal book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” appeared in 1997. His ideas on “disruptive” technologies influenced the … Continue reading →

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