Tag Archives: writing

Poesis in the Age of Wienie Grease

Posted on May 27, 2020 by

I’ve discovered that what’s called poesis, said to be the making and shaping of poems — they must be shaped as well as made! — is not straightforward. For one, you have to follow your feelings rather than steer them. … Continue reading →

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Art Is God-Light

Posted on May 23, 2020 by

In my language, the one I recall now only by closing my eyes, the word for love is Yeu. And the word for weakness is Yếu.How you say what you mean changes what you say.Some call this prayer. I call … Continue reading →

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The Troubling Arousal

Posted on May 11, 2020 by

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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So Playfully Valorized Seriousness

Posted on May 6, 2020 by

[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

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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Neck-Broken

Posted on April 6, 2020 by

A photo of Henry Adams helped draw me into a review by George F. Will of an anthology of conservative thinkers (“American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition,” Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich). In “The Education of Henry Adams (1907),” Adams … Continue reading →

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Such Ado About Something

Posted on March 6, 2020 by

Two bits in this opinion piece by Shmuel Rosner have an off ring, one solecistic, the other non-colloquial. But most Israeli voters would support such move. Most of them voted for parties that support such move. “Such” here is an … Continue reading →

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