Commentaries - June 2008

Your rhymed 14-line fly is open

From the notebooks of poet Winfield Townley Scott:

"A man may write a poem with his fly blatantly open — but the blatancy must not be in the poem."

And: "Oh, it appears too that there are those who maintain that the typewriter influences — or should influence — the length of the poetic line. God knows in what way or why."

Source: "a dirty hand": The Literary Notebooks of Winfield Townley Scott (Texas, 1969), p. 157.

Dylan bored by Warhol

This weekend I read Suze Rotolo's memoir of Greenwich Village in the early sixties and (of course, prominently) her relationship with Bob Dylan.

Democrat woes redux



"I've always said that in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you." — Ann Richards