2.14.2025
adjectives arise
Start a review of a book of poems by listing all the adjectives that come to mind while reading the book.
Labels:
adjectives,
listing,
reading poetry,
review
2.12.2025
2.11.2025
lack of urban planning
In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein associated language with "an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses."
2.09.2025
seen for what it is
To be acknowledged and accepted, not only must the work of art be created, but it must be seen (experienced); and seen through the correct cultural lens.
Labels:
art is,
create,
culture,
experienced,
lens,
seen,
work of art
2.08.2025
2.07.2025
lowered into the depths
Lines like a trawling net lowered into the depths of the psyche; no telling what they’d dredge up.
2.06.2025
2.05.2025
never expedient
Poetry as exposition that eschews expediency.
Labels:
expediency,
exposition,
poetry is
2.04.2025
aesthetic cage
Don’t forget that one’s aesthetic can be one’s cage.
Labels:
aesthetics,
cage,
reminder
2.02.2025
captains courageous
The courage of good criticism.
Labels:
courage,
critic,
critical writing,
criticism
2.01.2025
thirty years
Today we held a thirtieth anniversary reading of the poets who have met at my house since early 1995. I told someone after the reading, how much I valued the 'soft deadline' of having to press an inchoate poem into in a presentable state before the weekly meeting.
1.30.2025
from the belan deck
Naming things can feel impossible, but when it’s done well, it’s as if that thing could never be called something else.
-
I'd browse anything vaguely literary, looking for phrases that stood out as titles. Found poems.
-
If you don’t play around with the form, you’re not meant to be taken seriously.
-
I do believe a bulleted list can be art, poetry.
-
Give me artificial creativity—is there such a thing? Kenneth Goldsmith?
-
Books are made out of books.
-
Language is always an abbreviation.
-
The proper work of the critic is praise, and that which cannot be praised should be surrounded with a tasteful, well-thought-out silence.
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When we buy a book, we think we are buying the time to read.
-
Walt Whitman would sit on a bench at the South Street Seaport and watch waves of people come and go, swaying masses of humanity, individual points of light on each.
Our poets sit at the California Pizza Kitchen bar inside Terminal 1 at LAX, the crowds before them larger, more diverse than ever, teeming.
-
Change the line breaks and call it a poem.
-
The role of “poet” can only be filled by a human being.
-
A poem is just a shape.
-
The title is part of the text.
Matt Bucher, The Belan Deck (Sideshow Media Group Press, 2023)
-
I'd browse anything vaguely literary, looking for phrases that stood out as titles. Found poems.
-
If you don’t play around with the form, you’re not meant to be taken seriously.
-
I do believe a bulleted list can be art, poetry.
-
Give me artificial creativity—is there such a thing? Kenneth Goldsmith?
-
Books are made out of books.
-
Language is always an abbreviation.
-
The proper work of the critic is praise, and that which cannot be praised should be surrounded with a tasteful, well-thought-out silence.
-
When we buy a book, we think we are buying the time to read.
-
Walt Whitman would sit on a bench at the South Street Seaport and watch waves of people come and go, swaying masses of humanity, individual points of light on each.
Our poets sit at the California Pizza Kitchen bar inside Terminal 1 at LAX, the crowds before them larger, more diverse than ever, teeming.
-
Change the line breaks and call it a poem.
-
The role of “poet” can only be filled by a human being.
-
A poem is just a shape.
-
The title is part of the text.
Matt Bucher, The Belan Deck (Sideshow Media Group Press, 2023)
Labels:
ai,
aphoristic,
belan deck,
books,
line break,
poetics,
shape,
title,
walt whitman
1.29.2025
large language models
Poets have been making use of AI LLMs for ages, just more slowly than racks of servers.
Labels:
ai,
LLM,
servers,
slow,
vocabulary
1.27.2025
inferred from life
A good line of poetry is an inference from experience.
Labels:
experience,
inference,
life,
line,
poetic line
1.26.2025
not supposed to be there
A sneaky, chameleon-like line that hid itself in the poem and evaded cross-out.
Labels:
escape,
evade,
poetic line
1.24.2025
1.22.2025
way of thought
Yet I am one of those who from nothing but man’s way of
thought and one of his dialects and what has happened
to me
Have made poetry.
—George Oppen, “Of Being Numerous” [section 9], The Collected Poems of George Oppen (New Directions, 1971)
thought and one of his dialects and what has happened
to me
Have made poetry.
—George Oppen, “Of Being Numerous” [section 9], The Collected Poems of George Oppen (New Directions, 1971)
Labels:
dialect,
george oppen,
happen,
making,
thought,
where poems come from
1.21.2025
unusual path
A poem by the language less travelled.
Labels:
composition,
language,
less,
robert frost,
travelled
1.18.2025
1.17.2025
where poems come from
I have three children, but I only write about the troubled one.
Labels:
children,
troubled,
where poems come from
1.16.2025
1.15.2025
who wrote that
I’ve got nothing to write about right now. Good thing my notebook has some half-formed notions and false starts that someone has recorded in my handwriting.
Labels:
block,
false start,
half-formed,
handwriting,
notebook
1.14.2025
counting house poet
Chaucer’s poetic career in the years after 1372 shows how closely the movement of vernacular literary ideas tracked with the Italians’ international trading networks, and his work embodies that trade in ideas, frequently using accountancy—a young, exciting discipline—as a metaphor for moral reckoning. Noting how important those ideas were to Chaucer, his biographer Marion Turner goes so far as to call him, ‘the poet of the counting house’.
—Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (Biblioasis, 2024)
—Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (Biblioasis, 2024)
Labels:
accounting,
chaucer,
counting house,
metaphor,
reckoning,
trade
1.12.2025
1.10.2025
elements unfolding
In a poem what matters is how the elements unfold.
Labels:
composition,
elements,
unfold
1.08.2025
1.06.2025
too narrow a margin
I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Fermat’s Last Theorem
I have a truly marvelous draft of this poem which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Fermat’s Last Poem
Fermat’s Last Theorem
I have a truly marvelous draft of this poem which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Fermat’s Last Poem
1.05.2025
1.04.2025
allow it to happen
Let’s have fewer ‘generative’ workshops and more that are inspirational.
Labels:
generative,
inspirational,
workshop
1.03.2025
age overturned
The movement to free verse at start of the twentieth century, the turning away from regular meters and rhyme schemes, was much like the great shift in painting that occurred in the late 1200s in Italy. Driven by Cimabue and then Giotto, it brought naturalism into painting that too long had relied on the formulas that make early paintings look stilted and unreal to modern eyes.
Labels:
art,
change,
cimabue,
free verse,
giotto,
modern,
natural,
revolution
1.02.2025
image of note
London’s unsteady skyline
was not a reassuring one
but like a graph that measures
markets, snails and heartbeats.
—Fanny Howe, second stanza of “Primrose for X” from Love and I (Graywolf Press, 2019)
was not a reassuring one
but like a graph that measures
markets, snails and heartbeats.
—Fanny Howe, second stanza of “Primrose for X” from Love and I (Graywolf Press, 2019)
Labels:
fanny howe,
graph,
image of note,
london,
skyline,
unsteady
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