Word: poems
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...lecture lasted more than two hours, and dragged toward the end when Koch displayed the Wallace Stevens poem "Anecdote of the Jar" on an overhead projector to demonstrate some keys to reading poetry. Alarmingly, he turned Stevens' very sophisticated poem into a cartoon,delighting in the story of "this magic little jarwhich conquers Tennessee," and, while allowingthat more nuanced readings of the poem werepossible, he seemed so strongly by temperament toresist such readings that he effectively arguedagainst them. The key to enjoying this poem, heheld, lay in the music of its sounds and thesilliness of its story, and there...
...Stars and the Moon tells the wry tale of a material girl who brushes off a series of poor but ardent suitors only to learn that yachts and champagne aren't everything; Ricky Ian Gordon's Dream Variations is a laconic, sweet-and-sour setting of the famous poem by Langston Hughes that ends with "Night coming tenderly/ Black like...
...side of an office building, a statue of a business man leans forward, the wall resting where his head should be. A clever poem next to him recounts the fate of his "head for business." Sitting in Grand Central Market, eating fried bananas and feeling grateful that I took Spanish in school, I was amazed by how much I liked the parts of LA that...
...mixed with a dispatch from Hollywood, followed by another from Paris--Adam Gopnik on French health clubs, for instance; then some Washington pages in which, say, Al Gore was pried open by Joe Klein; plus a hair-raising investigative piece on some wiggly strain of hepatitis; a dry, subtle poem by Louise Gluck; and a very readable short story--ideally one with a good shot of sex or a British name attached...
Dwelling in the sulfurously lighted basement apartment of Simon's house, Henry is the Devil--a devil, anyway--with a gift for inspiring those he does not repel. An apt pupil, Simon composes a long poem that some people hate ("Drop dead," reads a publisher's rejection note; "keep your day job") but others champion. Simon becomes a literary celebrity, and in gratitude to his mentor says he will insist that his publisher also issue Henry's opus. Then, alas, he reads...