Thursday, September 08, 2011
Memory
The 10 years just passing, as we all must realize if we are being honest with ourselves, constituted the hinge decade, the decade when something substantial had to be done if the world were going to avoid the exponential catastrophe into which we have now embarked. (You can't go on sagely noting, year after year, that we have only 10 years left within which to confront the crisis, without at some point those 10 years having run out.) Perhaps we could have done both: honored the victims of 9/11 while at the same time tending to the far greater devastation bearing down on us. The point is that, obviously, we weren't able to, and in almost every conceivable way, the result has been an utterly squandered decade...
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Endless War and the culture of unrestrained power
''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The Unsung Work of Mina Loy
Loy is very much a modernist in her extremism, and in this new book, these extremes oscillate from cutting, astute satire to a near-decadent state of fantastical whimsy...
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Arthur Rimbaud’s Brief Career
I’m now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I’m working at turning myself into a Seer. You won’t understand any of this, and I’m almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. And I’ve realized that I am a poet. It’s really not my fault.
Monday, August 22, 2011
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