Commentaries - August 2009

Visiting Wallace Stevens

I wrote the preface to a volume of poems inspired by the life and work of Wallace Stevens, edited by Dennis Barone and James Finnegan. Visiting Wallace has just been published and here is a PDF copy of that preface.

kids are game

Last spring I taught a series of workshops on contemporary poetry to high-school students. Great fun. Click on the image above for a readable view.

reading Emily not quite blithely

Readers of this blog will recall that Lawerence Schwartzwald often takes photographs of well-known people in the act of leading their literary lives. Dustin Hoffman reading Ginsberg. Patti Smith reading a book of criticism on Wallace Stevens. Here Blythe Danner, who was the voice of Elizabeth Bishop's poems in the Bishop Voices and Visions documentary, is seen yesterday in the Meat Packing District (just north of the West Village) reading Emily Dickinson and her Culture. By the way, Lawrence is (by avocation mostly, I think) what might be called a "literary photographer." Is this a unique category?

Credit: (c) Lawrence Schwartzwald 2009.

planning on seeing "Inglorious Basterds"?


"I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience." - Quentin Tarantino

1968 from Another Angle

Currently watching...the amazing documentary called Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, made by the same guy (Kevin Rafferty) who filmed The Atomic Cafe. Interviews with many players on the two teams spliced with video from the game. Yale was the much better team but Harvard came back to tie in the final few minutes. Meantime it's all about--of course--1968. Netflix users: this film is available to stream right to your computer. Factoids: The guy who was dating Meryl Streep was on one of the teams, as was Al Gore's roommate and several pals of George Bush. Above: the two-point conversion reception that tied the game in the final seconds.