digital emunction » Michael Robbins http://www.digitalemunction.com A website dedicated to literature, politics, life, and anything else worth talking about. Founded in 2006 by Robert P. Baird Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:44:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Author Who Relied on Coincidence I’ve rarely read a good thriller that didn’t, at some point, rely on coincidence to advance its plot. But nothing undoes a thriller like a poorly managed coincidence, & The Girl Who Played with Fire, the late Swedish mystery author…

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2010/03/02/the-author-who-relied-on-coincidence/ There Is a God Oh, finally.

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2010/02/28/there-is-a-god/ I’m a Runaway Son of the Nuclear A-Bomb Bobby has made Mailer’s tag his own, but this is an advertisement fa mice elf agin. I’ll be reading my poems at Myopic Books this Saturday, February 20,  at 7 pm. Details here. Daniel Borzutzky is also reading, so please…

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2010/02/17/im-a-runaway-son-of-the-nuclear-a-bomb/ Guest Post: Anthony Madrid’s Ongoing Planisphere Notebook 3 [This is the final installment of Anthony Madrid's notebook on John Ashbery's Planisphere, prompted by my writing about same for the London Review of Books. I saw Madrid read at Myopic Books in Chicago last night. He should not be…

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2010/02/01/guest-post-anthony-madrids-ongoing-planisphere-notebook-3/ Guest Post: Anthony Madrid’s Ongoing Planisphere Notebook 2 ONGOING PLANISPHERE NOTEBOOK
Anthony Madrid

4. Some Common Objections to Ashbery—Answered

OBJECTIONS

(a) Doesn’t all this allegory and code on the subject of poetry-writing itself get a bit wearisome after a while? I mean, it’s not like he’s saying anything bold. And it’s every other…

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2010/01/27/guest-post-anthony-madrids-ongoing-planisphere-notebook-2/ Guest Post: Anthony Madrid on John Ashbery [I recently mentioned to my personal trainer, the poet Anthony Madrid, author of The 580 Strophes, that I was writing about John Ashbery's Planisphere for the LRB. He suggested we read it together & compare notes. When I saw that his notes…

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2010/01/23/guest-post-anthony-madrid-on-john-ashbery/ Petal & Mop The predictably yawn-inducing results (by which I mean I predicted the top six in my sleep—check my dream journal if you don’t believe me—& the reason I was asleep is that I had been listening to the top six) are…

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2010/01/19/petal-mop/ Dreams of Our Father

Having embraced & professionalized the powers of force & fraud previously associated with the likes of John Yoo & Dick Cheney, Obama has embarked on a course of war that will certainly invite further abuses of power.

—Roger D. Hodge on…

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2010/01/16/dreams-of-our-father/ “The Incomprehensible Messages of Tree Frogs Explicate Each Other” First of all, note to Bill: I’m not that young. But thank you. I am reconciled to living in a world where useful critical work gets done in blog comment streams.

I am a bit more than halfway through Flow Chart,…

]]> http://www.digitalemunction.com/2009/12/21/the-incomprehensible-messages-of-tree-frogs-explicate-each-other/ Real Book Review 1 The Loop. Jacques Roubaud. Translated by Jeff Fort. Dalkey Archive Press. $16.95

In his afterword to the second volume of Jacques Roubaud’s “multi-volume series of autobiographical prose works” to be translated into English, translator Jeff Fort helpfully explains that the entire series…

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