Commentaries - October 2007

Notes toward a modernist pedagogy

I'm interested in what it means to teach modernism in the manner appropriate to the modern text. I do not think that doing this enacts the imitative fallacy — that is, why would someone need necessarily to teach modernism in a modernist way? What's the advantage? These would seem to be a legitimate doubt, but please read on and tell me if I'm wrong. Let me start here with the final lines of a famous poem by Gertrude Stein:

They cannot.
A note.
They cannot.
A float.
They cannot.
They dote.
They cannot.
They as denote.
Miracles play.

Jacket

Jacket design for my new book — by Laura Palese. Coming out in December or January from North Carolina.

Suddenly everyone began reading aloud

Last night's Cobbingfest — an event on visual and sound poetries — at the Kelly Writers House featured readings by Maggie O'Sullivan an

Looking at the production of it

Recently I've become interested in the trippy, sardonic West Coast early '60s surrealism of Wa

Talk about your form/content split

If you have never read even just a few paragraphs of the "Wansee Protocol," you are missing a chance to read Nazi writing at its most routine and most bizarre (both at once, of course). At