Reconfiguring Romanticism at Harvard

I went to this last night (from the Harvard college library website)

Monday, March 30, 7:00pm
Reconfiguring Romanticism: Readings from Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three, with Bill Corbett, Gerrit Lansing, Jeffrey C. Robinson, Jerome Rothenberg, Keith Waldrop & othersIn conjunction with the recent release of Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three, this reading and discussion will reveal surprising continuities between the Romantic canon and the experiments of modernism and postmodernism. Introduced by Patrick Pritchett.
Thompson Room, Barker Center

And it was something. My favorite part was when Keith Waldrop read Keats but also when he read his translation of something from Fleur du Mal and used the phrase "make whoopie" in his translation. The two guys sitting in the back of the room next to me (Patrick Pritchett the Introducer & IDK) looked to each other and started laughing at how fricken great that was to insert into a Baudelaire poem. I laughed, too. I also enjoyed the commentary from the two historians.

Random note about the Thompson Room, there's Bose Speakers embedded in the ceiling. (My attention wandered a little at one point -- during one of the non-poem reading times...)

Repost: Missing the State of Maine

Well, this is a funny letter. I ended up taking this letter and making a series of poems about it that're in my creative thesis. I didn't realize that they were inspired by this post until I found it today!

September 6, 2006 @ 3:09 pm ·

Dear Maine,

How are you today? Is the weather nice? Is everything shiny, new or renewed and exciting?

Are my little PITAS respectful as they wander around in the free world? Are they as excited about their new lives like I was when I first moved away?

I keep thinking about the red maple trees along the diagonal path behind the library. It’s not coming until a few weeks from now, but it is my favorite thing to see. I go there in my brain when I stare out the kitchen window with my eyes on the willow tree.

Today and some more todays to come, I'll be thinking about your wide and winding roads and surprise views from every twist.

yours forever,

Me

This Week in WTF: There is no limit to Dick Cheney's EvilNess

Dick Cheney had a secret assassination squad that would go kill people deemed a threat. It was not funded by the miltary and not backed by Congress; therefore, it was illegal.

This story came out a couple of weeks ago, and I read about it on Wonkette, but I forgot to pass it on. Seymour Hersh, the hilarious and intrepid-ish reporter who broke the story back at University of Minnesota in mid-march, was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross today, talking about this story and other Thing He Knows About, including Syria -- he's got an article titled "Syria Calling" in the New Yorker.

Long and short of it: Cheney was in charge of "the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office..." is what Hersh said on the 11th at UMinn.

JSOC, as summed up by Hersh has been, "going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving..."

Fresh Air asked the Obama administration about JSOC and they said that all military operations are funded by Congress and no one reports exclusively to the office of the Vice President.

So, that's that with that! Everything's better! Ha ha yah right---

What's quite, quite sad is that the world has been indellibly changed by the WTFishness of the Bush the Second Years in office and I'm not sure that that will ever change, despite campaign slogan and whatnot.

And now that I've posted these really mature pics of Cheney, his shadow government (as described in the Fresh Air interview with Hersh) will flag me (if they haven't already, they're not really doing their job well) and I will be surveilled. I hope my surveillor doesn't have a thing for redheads; he'll get all distracted by my beauty and forget to spy on me while I blog about how cute my dogs are or poems, or post vegetarian recipes.

This Week in WTF: Nightmare in Milton, MA

Sometimes the WTF stories I post here are the funny kind, but this disturbing story is not of that sort. It's awful -- really tragic. And it happened just down the street, relatively speaking.

MILTON, Mass. (March 29) -- A man on a rampage fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then headed toward his 9-year-old sister before officers shot him amid what their chief described as "a killing field."

The perpetrator was 23 year old Kerby Revelus. The prompting of the rampage has not been unveiled, yet.

That poor family...I feel so bad.

More news here.

On Demand Movie Review: Arthur and the Invisibles

What do Madonna, Snoop Dogg, and David Bowie have in common?

They are all in the movie (as voices) Arthur and the Invisibles. It's real cute! It's a kid movie that's half animation/ half live movie. It looks like it was also, or first, done in French.

What's really fun about it is how many myths and motifs it draws from: Shakespeare, King Arthur, Orphan Annie, Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, and on and on.

Best Part: when they all end up in Snoop's discotesque and drink gin and tonic.

Also, I love Mia Farrow. She's so cute. What a-hole would ever ditch this lovely soul for a 19 year old adopted daughter...?