I've often said that two of the greatest influences on my teaching have been Areopagitica and Anthony Bourdain. I'm going to miss the latter.

Enjoyed this sharp little piece on Weil - Remembering Simone Weil: The Price and the Purpose of Philosophy lareviewofbooks.org/article/rememb… via Los Angeles Review of Books

Had the pleasure of hearing Ilya Kaminsky read last night. Still thinking about the poems, the sequence. Deaf Republic is really great.

And the online publication is up now. I have a little entry on Plath and the radio drama here. Happy to be in such good company.

Here's a great piece by Elizabeth Outka, author of the new book Viral Modernism, on the 1918 flu pandemic, interwar literature, Virginia Woolf, and our current plight in The Paris Review: theparisreview.org/blog/2020/04/0…

Would be really hard to imagine Amiri Baraka's son giving the order to fire tear gas at people protesting police violence! But also, stranger things have happened.

On the new Longfellow bio: "It was Robert Lowell who characterized Longfellow as 'Tennyson without gin.' That’s about right—he is, except in his very best work, only mildly intoxicating, the equivalent of near beer." tinyurl.com/y9mvnvxc

Derek Mahon, one of Ireland’s leading poets, has died, aged 78 irishtimes.com/culture/books/… via Irish Times Culture

BREAKING NEWS: The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the American poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” #NobelPrize

Lots of thoughts circulating about the blockbuster Dylan deal today. As the creator and owner of the material, he is obviously free to do whatever he wishes with his IP, and this certainly seems like sensible estate planning. 1/

Robert Lowell: Memoirs, edited by Steven Gould Axelrod and Grzegorz Kosc – review theguardian.com/books/2022/aug…

Poetry and Social Class: Robert Pinsky on His Many Readings of Robert Lowell lithub.com/poetry-and-soc… via Literary Hub

For The Point Magazine, I wrote about Elizabeth Hardwick's "I." I think we forget that the first person can be used to self-implicate and not just to self-justify or to messily confess. She's a reminder. thepointmag.com/criticism/eliz…

Korean Dictator or Tennyson?

"If a poet is not self-absorbed, what else is he?" wmagazine.com/story/exclusiv…

'Thanks for your compliments about the Christmas poem... I wrote it in three quarters of an hour after church time and before lunch one Sunday morning, with the assistance of half a bottle of Booth’s gin.' T. S. Eliot on the Ariel Poems: bit.ly/2BTabhR #TSEliot

One of the best critics around, Denis Donoghue, on another one of the best critics around, Michael Wood, on one of the best critics ever, William Empson, in Commonweal Magazine . cc Princeton University Press : commonwealmagazine.org/ambiguous-char…

Swept Away By a Dark Current: the Plays of Eugene O’Neill newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

Loudly, for those in the back x.com/MatthewSitman/…

Kanye needs to read Andrew Epstein x.com/kanyewest/stat…