Tag: books
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Dispatches from the Sickhouse
After a remarkably healthy winter our luck ran out: last week Vincent came down with the flu — and believe me when I tell you that this skinny skinny boy really should not do without food for any length of time — and then, as I suppose was inevitable, on Saturday night, Aidan woke up […]
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Cal’s Advice? Read!
From Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell: When Philip Booth askes him to look at his poems, Cal suggests he study perhaps “three poets for a month, maybe copying-out poems” to see what he can use to extend his range: “Empson for intellect. Marianne Moore for observation. Frost for how to get a poem […]
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Cal & Elizabeth
On [what was] this day [when I began this post but is now yesterday] in 1917, Robert Lowell was born. I’m about a third of the way through Paul Mariani’s biography of Lowell, Lost Puritan, and I’m liking it more than the Hamilton so far — Mariani, while just as blunt about the wreckage Lowell’s […]
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Reading Tonight!
I’m reading, along with Kevin Barents and Chloe Garcia-Roberts, at the Blacksmith House in Cambridge tonight as part of their New Voices: Emerging Writers evening. I admit that I’m feeling intimidated by the prospect of reading in this series, at this historical house that has heard the voices of so many major & minor poets. […]
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The Tortoise & the Hare Redux: Lowell & Bishop
Having finished the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, I feel greatly affectionate towards them both. I can imagine how the plotline would get sexed up, but I’m stating here for the record that I think a future biopic should without question cast Robert Downey, Jr. as RL, and for EB, perhaps Meryl Streep: […]
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Re: Draft of the Week, #11.
I’ve read various poems by both Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, and I have a copy of Lowell’s Complete Prose that, although I haven’t finished it, I’ve read a fair amount of. (I got it for $1 in 2008, what a steal!) But somehow I never realized what true friends they were to each other […]
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My Winter List.
I’m working on a rather ambitiously tall stack of books from my reading list, and picked up two novels, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin and Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees, from the library. Which I haven’t even opened yet because of the magnificent richness of poetry books I’m reading: I won a free copy […]
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Massachusetts Poetry Festival.
According to their website, 178 poets and presenters are reading, leading workshops or performing at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival this coming weekend, with simultaneous launches all over the state. There’s a High School Poets Program, a huge slate of workshops, many many readings — and it’s free! If you’re attending on Saturday, come look me […]
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Collected Poets Series, A New Season begins.
This Thurday at 7:30pm we’re kicking off our third season of the Collected Poets Series with two amazing poets: Annie Finch and Lisa Olstein. Annie Finch is the author or editor of fifteen books of poetry, translation, and criticism. Her books of poetry include Eve, Calendars, The Encyclopedia of Scotland, and the forthcoming Among the […]
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Rainer Maria Rilke & Edward Snow.
In my mid-twenties, I picked up a hardcover poetry book from a sale table in Media Play. Anyone remember that store? Looking back now, it’s a minor miracle, that find, their book selections were so abysmal. The book: Uncollected Poems, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Edward Snow (North Point Press, 1996). I had read […]
Marie Gauthier 