World Class Poetry Blog

Poetic Missiles Shot Through The Walls Of Academe
19 December 2007, the poet @ 11:03 pm

Virginia Quarterly’s Hart Crane

Virginia Quarterly announced the winners of its 2007 writing awards, among them poet Peter Balakian for three poems about the World Trade Center towers from the perspective of a mail runner in the 1970s. From the VQR blog:

Peter Balakian’s poems are a unique and haunting take on the tragedy of 9/11. Rather than focusing on the horrors of that day, these poems narrate Peter’s naive admiration for the towers when he worked there as a mail runner in the early ’70s. His language is lush and exuberant—I’m reminded of Hart Crane’s odes to the Brooklyn Bridge or Walt Whitman’s lines of praise for Broadway—but in Peter’s work, this energy is freighted with the coming loss that we see from our historical perspective. The effect is poignant without ever straying into the maudlin.

After reading the poems for myself, I’d have to agree.

Virginia Tech’s Litmus Test

Need to know what is considered “disturbing writing?” Virginia Tech policy makers can tell you:

• Are the characters’ thoughts as well as actions violent or threatening?
• Do characters think about or question their violent actions?
• If one set of characters demonstrates no self-awareness or moral consciousness, are other characters aware of or disturbed by what has taken place?
• In other words, does the text reveal the presence of a literary sensibility mediating and making judgments about the characters’ thoughts and actions, or does it suggest unmediated venting of rage and anger?

When I first read this I thought we might be entering a new Victorian era in literature, but then I read the original piece upon which the above-mentioned blog post was based. Maria Hummel gives a much more thought-provoking treatment to the subject.

Perpetual Folly On LitMagBlogs

Someone else has had the same idea that I’ve had and have started to slowly implement. Clifford Garstang, who writes the Perpetual Folly blog, waxes poetically about litmags, litblogs, and litmagblogs. God bless him. He’s got a good list.

ZyzzyvaSpeaks Speaks About LitBlogolandia

Howard Junker picked up the mantle from Clifford and ranted for a little awhile about the sophomoric rantings of the LitMagBlog faces. Then he decided to broaden his purview by criticizing Ron Silliman’s link strategy. I can’t say his observations are not without merit.

Yevtushenko’s Oxford Revolution

Bernard Wasserstein reminisces about his nomination of Yevgeny Yevtushenko as the Oxford poetry professor. Too bad history has been written. He failed. But we still forgive him. Bernard, not Yev.

C For Effort

Speaking of LitBlogs, this one from Eastern Michigan University gets a C for effort. What? No header image? See, that’s the problem with the default WordPress template.

Submit a comment

Name

E-mail (not published)

Website URL

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail