Line count starts at the title. (Oh, let me go back.) First, the traditional title serves as an amuse-bouche of the poem, a compendiary taste of the lyrical feast to come: for example, Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” promises skunks and delivers skunks. However, in the conversationalist trope of Postmodernist poetic aesthetic, the title is the first line of a poem and is to be read first, the first line is read as the second, the second as the third, and so forth. The title is the first breath of narrative, and an author encourages his or her readers to read on—a rhetorical trick of unadulterated authorial intention as he or she strikes his or her first strokes to the page. James Schuyler breathes his first breath, “Dining Out with Doug and Frank,” as this promise of this narrative. Through the first several words, a rhetorical analysis suggests that the ambiguity between converging and diverging definitions, as well as being attracted and yet straying from narrative, demonstrates the isolation or fortitude one can feel surrounded by water in the middle of Manhattan. … continue reading this entry.
“Not” “Quite” “Yet:” A Lesson in Linguistics in Schuyler’s “Dining Out with Doug and Frank”
how i learned how to learn.
I finished this year at my personal best: I spent my summer scraping off the residue of my first, guiltless “F” but will graduate in May with a GPA of 3.53, I got engaged to the most creative, handsome, free-thinking mentor-slash-friend I know, and was accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Master’s of Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory, and Criticism program. Here are a couple of things that I’ve learned over this year. … continue reading this entry.
Lie still, Ezra and Jacques: A Poetic Space Exploration
‹‹Il n’y a rien hors du texte.›› De la grammatologie, 1967[1]
“Binary oppositions are essential in logocentric language.”[2] Diligent readers read into binary oppositions in Ezra Pound’s “Cino.”[3] When the jongleur speaks of “sing[ing] of the sun,” there is no textual evidence of an opposition. This opposition is a re-sounding inference, in that only the “sun” is mentioned; the moon is implied in opposition to the sun. In conjunction with the reader’s imagination, the poetic space renders the sun/moon dichotomy. This image exists already in two dimensions, one in the reader, and the other in the dramatic space. … continue reading this entry.
Oh, Hitch.
. . . “If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it’s as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse.
“You may chose a more rigorous mental workout but I credit this daily infusion of annoyance with extending my life span.”
Please, check your reason and rationality at the door, next to the lamp and perverse, mix-matched, family-sized set of “mental furniture.” It’s a useful and sustaining daily practice.
