Mostly, I am reading for school. Damn those books with small print! Calvino is out of the way. Am working my way simultaneously through Marjorie Perloff essays on poetry and a collection of personal essays. As one who is poetry impaired, Perloff leaves me mostly feeling stupid and panicky for not having time to track down any of the interesting poets she mentions (but they're not on the list, so the heck with them!) I've found I'm irritated (again) with the modernists who had wacko numerology theories -- Now, I am an admirer of H.D. and think Pound may not have been quite the mentor he told her he was --snarky comment from Carolyn -- but her Hermes Trismegestus stuff is just baloney and so, for that matter is Pound and his numerology AND Yeats's, too. So there. Perloff alerts me that this business was by no means isolated. Anybody paying attention to recent mathematics and network theory can see that the mysticism they took from supposed "numerical coincidences" are, in fact, completely explainable in the math. Or imho, just plain bullshit. I forget who said "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic" But more or less that's what happened to those poor souls. They were poets, but that doesn't excuse a lack of intellectual rigor elsewhere.
posted by Carolyn @ 12/05/2005 08:54:00 PM Permalink
Liz Maverick
Jennifer Ashley
Sandy Schawb
Patti O'Shea
Marjorie M. Liu
Megan Frampton
Kristin Nelson
Miss Snark
Dystel & Goderich
The Rejecter
Evil Editor