Category Archives: Nineteenth-century literature
Not New York
January 8, 2014 I’m about to head off to Chicago, also about to teach my freshman seminar: “Cities.” Chicago again, New York, San Francisco. The books are the usual suspects, but not all of them (for San Francisco I’m … Continue reading
Natasha Trethewey, Emily Dickinson: Partners in Crime
June 12, 2013 In her interview in the LA Review of Books (just out), Natasha Trethewey mentions only Derek Walcott and Robert Penn Warren as poets who touch her at moments of mass fatalities. But I’d like to think that … Continue reading
Reflections on the Conference
It’s now just shy of three weeks past April 19 and I’m still lingering on the papers presented and conversations had at the first American Literature in the World graduate student conference. “Linger” seems appropriate to my mode of contemplation … Continue reading
Linda Hogan, Herman Melville: People of the Whale
April 10, 2013 The Native Americans have always been there, of course. The very name of the ship brings up their ghostly presence, for “Pequod, you will no doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts … Continue reading
Shankar, Coltrane, Whitman: Within You, Without You
December 12, 2012 2012 is full of deaths at the year’s end. Dave Brubeck last week; this week, Ravi Shankar. Shankar was half an American musician (the fractions don’t have to add up to a zero-sum game). Since 1970 he … Continue reading
Sherman Alexie, Walt Whitman: Hoop Dreams
November 14, 2012 When Stephen Colbert pointed out with incredulity that he had come out with yet another book, Sherman Alexie said, “That’s what happens when you’re literate.” Yes, from reading to writing: it’s as easy as that, as inevitable. … Continue reading
Edward Weston, Walt Whitman: Grass
November 7, 2012 Whitman, poet of New Jersey and New York. Also poet of grass, the force of demographics, what comes up from the ground. He would have been unsurprised by Hurricane Sandy, or by the rising sea levels … Continue reading
Maya Angelou, Walt Whitman: Songs of Myself
September 19, 2012 As of today, “Still I Rise” has 743,494 views on YouTube. There are 1,113 comments, some vituperative, including this one: “What the fuck kind of poetry is this? John Milton would rise from the dead to kill … Continue reading
Oceanic Archives, Hong Kong University 2012
June 5, 2012 At least I’ve heard Elizabeth DeLoughrey before. She’s been working on this stuff for years, it’s always a pleaure to get a new installment — in this case, the ocean in danger of being reterritorialized by “seasteading” and … Continue reading