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On Archie [Ammons] on His Birthday [Feb 18]
Archie I’m listening to Eric Dolphy without understanding a word there are no words but I know what you mean on the drive back to Hamilton College after visiting Archie for the first time…
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Major Jackson: “On occasion though, a devastating feeling hits me . . . “
(Ed note: Every volume of The Best American Poetry includes contributors' notes for which the poets share something about the inspiration for the poem chosen for the book. Here's what Major Jackson writes about…
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Who said it? (2025 series, #5)
"You can be free if you want to be." "Don't kill the criminal; make him work for you." "Don't kiss the fool; ignore his opinions Opinions have killed more people than earthquakes and vocanoes."…
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Susan Barba: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
__________________________________________________________________________ Player Piano My face is a case study in gravity. A face study. A grave. Effaced, I introduce myself by name, a quippy delegate, ceci Susan, this lifelong stand-in.…
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How People Reacted to Jackson Pollock’s Paintings [by David Lehman]
Abstract art seemed to fly in the face of good old American horse-sense. The standard response to a reproduction of a Pollock [pictured above] was, "Why, my five-year-old could do that." Or, “It looks…
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“Bright Star” [by John Keats]
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike…
