Category Archives: Introductions

Typologies of Criticism

In an interview with Ekbert Faas, Robert Bly mentions a piece he wrote that appeared in The American Poetry Review that draws on Jung. I wrote an article for The American Poetry Review recently giving examples in poetry of the … Continue reading

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Frottage Fancy

Frank Kermode Forms of Attention led me to be acquainted with a Donne poem that I had not studied in school and if I had it might have been recuperated in workings of allegory as Kermode reports “Attempts were made … Continue reading

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Pet Metaphors

Robert Kelly introduction to Thomas Meyer The Umbrella of Aesculapius. Each age of poetry seems to have a pet metaphor drawn from other arts for an inward vision of its own nature; so in the sixteenth the stage, seventeenth the … Continue reading

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Power of Attention

If you do not recognize any of the names in Naomi Schor’s master stroke, just imagine that literary history is like fantasy league football. One of the major objectives of feminist literary criticism has been the reshaping of the canon, … Continue reading

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Dream Net Sound Shaping

To bend twigs, to compose. The Music of Warren Benson CRI SD433 [1981]. The Dream Net [18′ 10″] [Recorded at Eastman School of Music, 1978]. Frederick Hemke, saxophonist. Kronons Quartet, strings. Notes from the album sleeve The title, The Dream … Continue reading

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Word Book World Back

It was originally published under the title Triton. Wesleyan University Press reissued it under the title Trouble on Triton with a forward by Kathy Acker who introduces the reader to the intricacies of Samuel Delany’s prose by way of an … Continue reading

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Carriage

Jeanette Winterson. Weight. Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is … Continue reading

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Interactively Immersed

Good beginnings state the stakes. And this is the case with the conclusion of the introduction to Marie-Laure Ryan Narrative as Virtual Reality But why should the synthesis of immersion and interactivity matter so much for aesthetic philosophy? In its … Continue reading

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Manners

Reprise from my own meditations on quotations: Quotations, too, participate in various genres. Some are illustrative, some are authoritative, some are epigraphs. And like drawings, quotations often need to be accompanied by words. This leads me to an example. For … Continue reading

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1492-1992

Ours and not ours. This is how I summarize the take on Columbus found in a smart little volume by Stefano Milioni about the foodstuffs that were adopted by Italians post contact. The volume is entitled Columbus Menu: Italian Cuisine … Continue reading

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