Day: November 18, 2004

You mean he’s not just this way on the written page? I took this class because of Prof. Wallace’s reputation as an author. What a mistake! This guy just likes to hear himself talk, and he won’t shut up. He knows how to play the part of a enigmatic “genius” all right … [Link courtesy…

I can see that Ashbery might stake a claim to being the most influential poet since 1955, though, given how many of his poetic descendants fall over themselves to be even more willfully inscrutable and opaque than Ashbery. For instance, there’s Not Even Then, a recent volume by Brian Blanchfield (who teaches at Pratt Institute),…

Harold Bloom calls John Ashbery in the upcoming Poetry Issue of the Sunday New York Times Book Review “our major poet since the death of Wallace Stevens in 1955.” I don’t know where that leaves Allen Ginsberg, for example, but it seems a highly dubious claim, especially given inscrutable, maddening lines like these, from a…

I had some time to kill this afternoon, so I did some reading in one of the carrels on the third floor of Hatcher. I turned to look out the window and saw a fascinating display on the radiator below the window. The radiator was one of those old 1960s/1970s models with hundreds of vents,…

I went into Ambrosia twice today, once at 11.30 and once at 3.15, and both times it was too packed to find anywhere to sit down inside. I realized that the place has hit its tipping point of popularity, although Ambrosia has always kind of flown under the radar, never winning (or even placing on)…

Tomorrow is my final registration appointment at the University of Michigan. Hard to believe. Damn, these 15 months have gone by fast! I am pretty sure what I’m going to take, including the dreaded 502 class that I put off last winter and now have no choice (poetic justice, since the title of the course…