“Dance in America” by Lorrie Moore
One of the first times I heard Kenny Loggins, I was probably pretty young. Top Gun came out in 1986, so I was probably six years old or so when I first heard “Highway to the Danger Zone.” My father stood in front of the television when they showed Goose dead in Maverick’s arms.
My mother had a cassette tape of Celebrate Me Home and a cassette tape of Loggins and Messina, both of which we all listened to in the car on the way to school.
Many people don’t know this about me, but when I was in 5th grade, I actually saw Loggins in concert. My family was visiting Chattanooga to look for houses, as we planned to move there within the next year, and we visited during the summer when the city has a festival called Riverbend. Loggins performed. I don’t remember much of it, sadly.
Seam Ripper
If you haven’t already, check out this amazing series over at Delirious Hem, curated by Kate Durbin & Becca Klaver called:
SEAM RIPPER: Women on Textual & Sartorial Style
which includes superlative material from Kate Durbin herself, Jackie Wang, carina finn, Danielle Pafunda, Elisa Gabbert, and many others…
Bill Knott Week: First Step toward a New & Selected Poems
Another Knotty thing worth snagging for your e-reader: Bill Knott is offering (again, for free!) what he’s calling a “first step” toward a long-awaited New and Selected Poems edition. From the introductory note:
This volume is a selection of poems I’ve written through
the years, from 1960 to the present.
the years, from 1960 to the present.
My choices are personal, though in some instances I’m relying on what other people have indicated they liked,
deferring to their judgement.
Farrar Straus & Giroux marketed my book “The Unsubscriber” in 2004, and then foolishly, considering what a critical and financial failure that book was, proposed to publish as a follow-up my Selected Poems, and suggested I should prepare a 240-page ms. for that purpose. Luckily wiser heads prevailed, the Selected was quashed and never appeared.
This is the shadow version of that stillborn book.
Mike Young—
“There are always new darknesses to rally against. But should I choose to revisit those old stories, the stories that dealt so specifically with that period of darkness, a darkness that almost took me but for the books that showed me what it was to survive, I know now how to write the ending.” — Chris Newgent with a poignant blog essay, “The Why Behind Vouched,” at Vouched Books
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Not A-Z, but I-Me
There’s a scene in that movie High Fidelity (based on the Nick Hornby book, I guess, which I didn’t read) where John Cusack’s character reveals to Dick, his record store employee (played quite brilliantly by Todd Louiso), that he (Cusack) was in the midst of reorganizing his record collection–in autobiographical order.
I’ve always loved that idea. READ MORE >
Mailer’s Apartment
Norman Mailer’s apartment is for sale and I will confess that I just drooled a little while looking at these photos. Anyone have 2.5 Million?
Bill Knott Week: A Knottian Contribution from Jeremiah Gould
photograph and photograph preparation by Jeremiah Gould
Reynard Seifert—
“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” — Jessica Dovey “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bill Knott Week: mythkitty
Bill Knott, perhaps in response to a suggestion on this site that he make his already-free digital editions of his books available as text files for convenience of e-reader types, published a first draft of mythkitty, a new selection of his poems, on his blogspot site. I copied it immediately to a text file, and sent it to my Kindle.
From Knott’s introductory notes to mythkitty:
Philip Larkin urged poets to refrain from rummaging in what he called the “myth-kitty” and to instead take their themes and images from the immediate daily life around them, as he himself did so brilliantly and with such genius.
“The Mnemogogues” by Primo Levi
The opening story in Levi’s The Sixth Day and Other Tales, “The Mnemogogues,” was my introduction to Levi. In it, Dr. Morandi, a young physician, arrives at his outpost in a small town in order to take the place of the aging Dr. Montesanto, who speaks to Morandi “about the defnitive prevalence of the past over the present, and the final shipwreck of every passion, except for his faith in the dignity of thought and the supremacy of the things of the spirit.”