“Water Images of The New Yorker”

I’m delighted to see that Harper’s has Charles Bernstein’s “Water Images of The New Yorker” online. It’s a funny take on what Bernstein terms “official verse culture.”

[I’m resisting the urge to go through our household’s three or four months’ worth of The New Yorker to see if anything has changed since 1989.]

A few lines of bad poetry

From The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse, edited by D.B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee (1930), lines from William Wordsworth’s poem “Liberty”:

The beetle loves his unpretending track,
The snail the house he carries on his back;
The far-fetched worm with pleasure would disown
The bed we give him, though of softest down.

That’s as close as I can come (after a few glances) to the cloying personifications in lines of contemporary poetry I heard on NPR.

The Stuffed Owl is still in print from New York Review Books, minus eight Max Beerbohm illustrations. An added pleasure of this anthology: Lewis and Lee title each excerpt. (The lines from “Liberty” are titled “Insensibility.”) Another added pleasure: the book’s subject index. For instance: “Beetle, flight of, described, 15; not addicted to vagabondage, 150.” And “Owl, stuffed, emotions evoked by contemplation of, 151.” “The Stuffed Owl,” too, is by Wordsworth.

Remembering The Stuffed Owl prompts me to revise what I wrote about bad poetry: it’s bad poetry presented as legitimate art that makes me groan and wince. Bad poetry presented as such makes me smile and laugh.

See also a woodpecker looking for a gift and Marjorie Perloff’s commentary on the “‘well-crafted’ poem.”

[Who decides what’s bad? We all do.]

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with single-use.

Monk vs. Trump

[Click for a greater difference.]

Having titled a post Felonious Trump, I felt that I had to do it. Meme, anyone?

Some molecular biology

[Zippy, December 8, 2018.]

Zerbina and Zippy must share a magnifying glass.

Related reading
All “some rocks” posts
All Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Frank Longo, is not too tricky. A giveaway gave me a good start: 18-Across, ten letters, “Much-lauded four-Emmy football film of ’71.” Other clues point to answers veiled by thick fog. For instance, 61-Across, ten letters, “Advocate-in-chief.” LEADLAWYER? No.

Three clues that I greatly like: 5-Across, “Common daycare container.” 4-Down, nine letters, “Setting ending in The Artist.” (“Setting ending”? What?) And 20-Down, six letters, “‘A poem begins in delight and ends in __’: Frost.” Poetry FTW!

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Felonious Trump

I’m no lawyer, but it seems clear that Individual-1 directed Michael Cohen to commit felonies. From the federal prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for Cohen:

During the campaign, Cohen played a central role in two similar schemes to purchase the rights to stories — each from women who claimed to have had an affair with Individual-1 — so as to suppress the stories and thereby prevent them from influencing the election. With respect to both payments, Cohen acted with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election. Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments. (PSR ¶ 51). In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1. (PSR ¶¶ 41, 45).

The recommendation notes that in June 2015 Individual-1 “began an ultimately successful campaign for President of the United States.” You can read the recommendation at The Washington Post.

No mail

It was the start of the semester, the second or third class of the first week. I walked into the classroom with a backpack full of books and CDs, which I thought would increase my cred with students. I hadn’t brought anything related to the class, as I realized when I looked through the backpack. Several students gathered at my desk to look at the CDs. And I thought to myself: what was I going to assign? A student whom I knew from a previous class asked me to explain something in “the book” — not a book for our class, just some book. I looked at the page and explained it, and she thanked me.

Then I went to check my mail. The mailboxes had been reorganized into three rows from six, and the first row now began with the end of the alphabet. Where was my name? “You don’t work here anymore,” a colleague told me. That’s right, I thought. I’m retired, but I’m still teaching, so there could at least be a mailbox for me. I recognized another colleague in the hallway. He had lost an enormous amount of weight and was nearly bald, but still, I recognized him, or thought I did. I felt that I was taking a chance when I addressed him by name. He too was retired but still teaching, so I asked him if he knew where I could find my mail. He showed me a drawer under the mailboxes. But it was filled with Band-Aids: no mail.

It was now 5:30, and I walked through the hallways looking for someone else to ask. I saw no one, though many of the offices had the door open and lights on. I thought about how strange it might feel to all at once see someone in what appeared to be an empty well-lit building.

[This is the thirteenth teaching-related dream I’ve had since retiring. Not one has gone well. The others: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.]

Poetry on NPR

I respond deeply to bad blues, bad jazz, and bad poetry. I groan, wince, make guttural sounds. I can’t take it, I tell ya. Lemme out!

Driving through the night last night, Elaine and I heard an NPR segment with a poet recommending books of poetry to give as gifts. “Poetry is short,” the poet said, “so you can actually reroute your day productively in like five minutes with something that really captures your imagination.” Well, no. I groaned.

Then came the recommended books, with sample passages. Here’s nature: “Perhaps the butterflies are mute because / no one would believe their terrible stories.” Well, no. The poet would, for one. The recommender would, for two. And from another book, more nature, this time bees: “tipsy, sun drunk / and heavy with thick knitted leg warmers / of pollen.” After those lines I made guttural sounds.

And no, NPR, the witches’ song from Macbeth is not a sonnet. I’d better use up my wince here.

A related post
A Palm memo (With some bad poetry)

[I have reproduced the lines accurately, after checking the texts.]

Unabated

The hypocrisy never ends: in Bedminster, New Jersey, an undocumented immigrant cleans house at Trump National Golf Club. And: “She said she was not the only worker at the club who was in the country illegally.”