1/ From “Late and Soon,” Dan Chiasson’s review of Robert Hass and Mark Strand in this week’s New Yorker:

The zero-​sum fluc­tu­a­tions of Hass’s mate­r­ial, some intel­lect fol­lowed by some feel­ing, cool­ness here, warmth there, at times become a formula—more a recipe for soup than soup—but at other times yield work that, exquis­itely recep­tive to actual hap­pi­ness, has opened up new ter­ri­tory for the per­sonal poem.

2/ From “The Cat Went out for Good,” Charles Simic’s much-​lamented review of Robert Creeley’s Col­lected Poems:

The aes­thetic theory—and there is always a theory behind such reduc­tive views—may sound per­sua­sive, but it was fool­ish on Creeley’s part to believe that it could ever val­i­date a poem. If poet­ics were like cook­ing and one could write down a recipe for all of one’s future poems, that would be true. How­ever, great cooks rarely bother to con­sult cookbooks.

2.5/ A bonus View, from Chi­as­son again:

Being a poet doesn’t help you cook a meal or bathe your three-year-old daughter…

1/ From Don Share’s post at Har­riet, the Poetry Foundation’s blog, refer­ring to an arti­cle by Richard Rorty that appears in the new issue of Poetry:

Rorty knew he was dying from pan­cre­atic cancer at the time he was work­ing on the piece. When asked by his son whether the read­ing or writ­ing of phi­los­o­phy gave him any com­fort, he said, surprisingly… no: “neither the phi­los­o­phy I had writ­ten nor that which I had read seemed to have any par­tic­u­lar bear­ing on my situation.” “Hasn’t any­thing you’ve read been of any use?” his son per­sisted. “Yes,” Rorty reports blurt­ing out, “poetry.” He explained:

…Read More…

1/ From the cover of the Novem­ber 2007 Harper’s. Photo by David Graham:

2/ From “The Mission,” in the Octo­ber 29, 2007 New Yorker. Illus­tra­tion by Steve Brodner:

1/ From James Fallows’s response to Peter Navarro in the Let­ters sec­tion of the Octo­ber 2007 Atlantic Monthly:

Read­ers should cer­tainly read Navarro’s book to see his argu­ment in its full ver­sion. The notes sec­tion of his book begins, ‘Much of the research con­ducted for this book was done over the Internet.’ All of the research for my arti­cle was done on-​scene in fac­to­ries and trad­ing com­pa­nies in China.

2/ From Caitlin Flanagan’s response to Mike Males in the Let­ters sec­tion of the Octo­ber 2007 Atlantic Monthly:

In report­ing this essay, I attended an eye-​opening pre­sen­ta­tion at my children’s ele­men­tary school.