ESSAYS by Susan Howe and John Matthias

& REVIEWS of Robert Cree­ley, Devin John­ston, Kent John­son,
African Amer­i­can poetry antholo­gies, and Alis­tair McCartney.

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In lieu of orig­i­nal thought, a few items of pos­si­ble interest:

+ John Conroy is back! But he’s on WBEZ now instead of writ­ing for the Chicago Reader. (This is not exactly news, but a story today–not up yet on the WBEZ web­site–reminded me to men­tion it.)

+ Emily Wilson (the clas­si­cist, not the poet) reviews John Tipton’s Ajax: “He suc­ceeds bril­liantly at cre­at­ing a living, con­tem­po­rary Sopho­cles. His ver­sion is a chill­ing mirror.” (The original’s in The Nation, but trapped behind a paywall.)

+ Marty Riker inter­views the Flood fel­lows: “Just for the record, I was not, in fact, an angry young man. Con­fused and obnox­ious, but not really angry.”

+ Auf­gabe’s edi­tors undo “Numbers Trouble”: “Should we be thank­ful or irri­tated that the draft is gendered?”

+ Danielle Allen speaks for her­self on the Obama Muslim smear: “Worse than mud.”

+ Kent John­son is still not sure about “A True Account of Talk­ing to the Sun at Fire Island”: “‘It is a real mys­tery, that poem.’”

Apologies for that last. Rather than waste your time on William Kris­tol and Leo Strauss, can I instead sug­gest you ease your Monday-​morning pro­cras­ti­na­tions with John Latta on William Logan on Frank O’Hara? Thanks.

Enchanted by this little mys­tery over at John Latta’s Isola di Rifiuti, I set myself to poking around Google Books, which coughed up this page and its delight­ful list of the “key words and phrases” in Ken­neth Koch’s Selected Poems 1950-1982:

sleep­ing with women, circus girls, Thes­mopho­ri­azusae, Poros, asleep and sleep­ing, Frank O’Hara, O’Ryan, Saint Ursula, Fer­nand Leger, Jane Freilicher, Art of Love, John Ash­bery, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, lim­burger cheese, Amba, poetry, brassiere, Larry Rivers, Strangler

No, kids, it’s not flarf; it’s just a little fun.