Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Tortoises, consisting of six long, unrhymed poems by D. H. Lawrence, was printed in 1921 in New York City (by Thomas Seltzer). In Baby Tortoise, Lawrence writes: Voiceless little bird,Resting your head half out of your wimpleIn the slow dignity…
David P. Goldman gained a large-scale following as the Spengler of Asia Times. Apart from being a well-immersed observer of China with strong opinions, he is also a well-trained musicologist with strong opinions. He has argued that Wagner’s deepest anti-Semitism…
A name from the poetic anthology mentioned in this post of mine has surfaced in a comment to a post at Language Hat: Elinor Wylie. Velvet Shoes was the only poem by Wylie I could recall. In the comment linked…
Reviewing Evgeny Boratynsky and the Russian Golden Age by Anatoly Liberman, Sibelan Forrester remarks: Russians who read Anglophone poetry in the Soviet period turned to the works available, which were largely translations or original editions of poetry from the era…
From Farmers Weekly, a British magazine: A land value tax could be introduced in Scotland as part of the country’s ongoing reform journey. The proposals are included in the Land and property taxation in Scotland: Initial scoping of options for…
Sergei Dovlatov once remarked: “In Soviet newspapers, only misprints are truthful.” His first example was gavnokomanduyushchiy instead of glavnokomanduyushchiy — “Commander-in-Shit” for “Commander-in-Chief,” roughly speaking. Dovlatov did not live to witness the spread of spell checkers and autocorrectors. We’re all…
Shortly after watching a performance of Timofey Kulyabin‘s production of The Broken Pitcher (or The Broken Jug) – a remarkably well thought through interpretation – I learned that Kleist had been thinking of Oedipus Rex while writing his comedy: The…
The Quadrillion to the fourth power argument graces an insane, dangerous and all-over anti-American lawsuit. As if it weren’t enough, now the states of New California and New Nevada have filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the Texas…
When Trump visited Moscow in 1987, he did some preliminary probing for a possible real estate deal but came back disappointed: the USSR had no private ownership of land at all and the dispute resolution procedure his Soviet counterparts proposed…
Three tweets from the same thread related to the insane lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General (himself under indictment for securities fraud) against four other states, seeking to have Trump anointed as the winner despite his loss to Biden…
Ron Charles, a literary critic, writes in the Washington Post of his approach to modern poetry: …I stopped demanding that every poem yield its concealed meaning… Instead I just read — often aloud — letting the words flow over me…
A recount in Wisconsin’s two largest counties (by population) ended with Biden gaining a net of 87 votes over Trump. Together, the two counties make up 26% of the state’s population. Biden’s statewide margin of victory is about 20,600 votes.…