December 2011
2 posts
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Things I'm Happy About: King Street Station
King Street Station in Seattle’s once-glorious and much-neglected Pioneer Sqaure, is a beautiful, classic train stop whose clock tower is modeled on San Marco in Venice. It was grand and lovely until the 1950’s, when, in a misguided attempt to modernize, they put in a drop-ceiling, covering the height, windows, and terra cotta carvings on the ceiling. Instantly, the place felt...
November 2011
1 post
Objects 101 by Roger Sandall - The New Criterion →
A tough-minded article, and a brave (and diminishing) stance.
October 2011
3 posts
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Mudcake
Five if us lived
in the backyard
on was it Apollo
street in Arizona?
Made a cake one
day, only not a real one
because we were
six and no stove.
So, one from the things
that made up our after-school
world, like the cracked and drying mud
of the thirsty desert and yellow-
headed dandelions
which I didn’t learn
were weeds till thirteen,
and sticks from the branches
in the tree where...
5 tags
Dream at Bethel
Quiet now, but for camels’ tongues,
lopping fat and sticky in the young
desert night, big wind in the black backdrop
of sky, crickets and their ancient legs, log-pops
from my small fire. Cool on my feet,
this breeze after two days walking since the trees
of my village waved their shaggy good-byes. My wool socks
stuffed in boots, I relax; put a smooth rock
under my head, start to dream...
September 2011
2 posts
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New Essay Published by Mellen Press
Literary and Poetic Representations of Work and Labor in Europe and Asia During the Romantic Era: Charting a Motif Across Boundaries of Culture, Place, and Time is available now from Mellen Press, featuring a chapter I contributed entitled “Theatricality and Imaginative Failure in Keats.”
This chapter is part of a larger project I have in mind called “The Vanishing Point,” which will begin...
5 tags
University of Tübingen
This just in: for the 2011-2012 academic year, I will be Scholar-in Residence at the University of Tübingen, near Stuttgart, Germany. Along with giving weekly lectures in English Literature, I’ll be doing a good deal of writing and traveling during this time. Special thanks to the English Seminar at Tuebingen for having me (especially Prof. Christoph Reinfandt), to the University of...