Come celebrate the launch of 5 new books by 5 exciting poets at the Jefferson Market Library, June 4th, at 3PM Continue reading

It’s a wonderful feeling when your faith in an idea long dormant is restored. I recently experienced such a restoration after watching the Polish horror film Hellhole on Netflix. There is a segment in this film that shamelessly borrows a visual motif from The Witch, Robert Eggers' arthouse masterpiece of 2015. But the self-conscious way it uses such elements reinforced the usefulness of a concept I had personally consigned to my mental trash bin: postmodernism. In fact, comparing The Witch and Hellhole is a good way to differentiate modern from postmodern style. Doing so, you (re)discover what was (is) great... Continue reading

How do you find meaning in a life that seems absurd? This is the question the film Everything Everywhere All at Once keeps asking. Such a query, of course, is one that has haunted modernity since at least the days of existentialism. But the way the film goes about answering it is distinctly contemporary: it presents us with a blizzard of spectacular imagery from which to draw our conclusions. The film’s basic plot is reminiscent of classic visionary narratives of the past, such as Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and especially The Wizard of Oz, except that it... Continue reading

Poetry, Music, Art, Performance — a major blast! Info here: https://www.lamama.org/shows/poetry-electric-the-naughty-n-nice-list-2021 Continue reading

There is a scene in the 2nd episode of HBO’s The White Lotus that struck me as both jarring and familiar. It occurs at lunch time at the Hawaiian vacation resort that is the setting for the mini-series. Rachel Patton (Alexandra Daddario) a freelance journalist on her honeymoon, stops by the table of Nicole Mossbacher (Connie Britton), the CFO of a popular search engine, there on vacation with her family. Rachel is worried. She has just gotten hitched to a real estate mogul who urges her to give up her career (it’s just “disposable garbage…clickbait” he tells her) and enjoy... Continue reading

You’ve seen it spreading rapidly through Facebook. Perhaps you’ve been infected yourself. I’m not referring to Covid-19, but another kind of virus: the “Poetry Marathon” that travels with the mysterious hashtag of #PeetMeNotLeave”—promising participants eventual publication in something called “The Russian Almanac.” What's asked of poets who join in is that they share eight of their poems over eight days on Facebook and ask eight others to do the same. Such chains appear frequently on FB, collecting everything from photos to favorite books. One reason the current iteration of the form has been greeted with such enthusiasm is because people... Continue reading

Once upon a time, there was a poetry of consumerism. I’m thinking here of how buying stuff was celebrated through the ironic creativity of mid 20th century urbanites. Rather than grousing about the vulgarity of their city, these souls were inspired by its arty and tacky qualities. Informed by a nearly utopian cornucopia of consumer goods, they created witty fables of abundance. Think of the pop artists and their love of such consumables as canned soup, comic books and hamburgers. Or of Frank O’Hara, writing poems about strolling through Manhattan, shopping for a carton of Gauloises, an edition of Verlaine,... Continue reading

Our culture runs on stories. But not all narratives treat their characters well. Continue reading

Dreams aren’t what they used to be. Once upon a time, they had the power to invade daylight. Here’s Walter Benjamin, from the beginning of One-Way Street, published in 1929: “A popular tradition warns against recounting dreams the next morning on an empty stomach. In this state, though awake, one remains under the spell of the dream.” Benjamin goes on to caution that unless there is a definite break between the dream state and waking life “the grey penumbra of the dream persists”, and the daytime and nocturnal worlds get mixed, leading to confused states of mind. My experience of... Continue reading

In our last exciting episode, we covered 3 relatively new, but tiresome words that are drummed into our heads every business day: “millennial,” “innovation,” and “content.” Now we’re going to take on four more candidates — words that make you … GAG! And the nominees are … 4. Disruption It... Continue reading

How often does this occur to you when sitting in a business meeting? “If I hear that word one more time, I’m going to strangle somebody.” Why is it that we speak in normal parlance in everyday conversation, but in our work lives turn into robots — spitting out clichés... Continue reading

You’ve felt the pain… You come in for a client meeting to review copy and find yourself in a conference room with 20 eager junior “team members.” Each wants to make his or her mark — on your content. You’ve written the perfect headline that comes back “tweaked” and now... Continue reading

Here’s a pet peeve many have with television commercials and marketing in general. Often when aiming to be creative, marketers overwork an idea to the point where consumers want to throw a missile at the screen every time the spot airs. How many times can you watch the Dominos commercial,... Continue reading