November 14, 2012 Bulletin Act Fast: Offer Will Not Last! By Sadie Stein This Friday, November 16, is your last chance to take advantage of our special mug deal! If you’ll recall, one side of this classic diner mug displays our logo. The other side (not pictured here): “The first really promising development in youthful, advance guard, or experimental writing in a long time.” —Newsweek, 1953 It’s yours with a one-year subscription or renewal; your subscription will begin with our winter issue. Order now! Offer good for U.S. addresses only.
November 14, 2012 On Poetry Refusing Heaven By Drew Bratcher The fall I moved to Washington from Nashville, Tennessee, the poet Jack Gilbert gave a reading at the Library of Congress. During my first days in the city, Gilbert’s Refusing Heaven had become for me something of a vade mecum. On wobbly Metro rides to and from work (my first experience with public transportation), I read and reread the book, drawn to its fierce, lapidary verses as a kind of antidote to homesickness and the political blather emanating from Capitol Hill. The poems trembled in my hands on the train yet somehow steadied me. Gilbert’s lines might have come from any continent in any century. They wouldn’t have seemed so out of place scrawled on papyrus or etched in stone. Read More
November 14, 2012 Look In Dalí’s Surreal Home By Sadie Stein In January, Open Culture ran this terrific tour of Salvador Dalí’s house on the Costa Brava, where he lived from 1930 to 1970 and hosted much of the modern world. As author Joseph Pla described it, The decoration of the house is surprising, extraordinary. Perhaps the most exact adjective would be: never-before-seen. I do not believe that there is anything like it, in this country or in any other…. Dalí’s house is completely unexpected…. It contains nothing more than memories, obsessions. The fixed ideas of its owners. There is nothing traditional, nor inherited, nor repeated, nor copied here. All is indecipherable personal mythology…. There are art works (by the painter), Russian things (of Mrs. Gala), stuffed animals, staircases of geological walls going up and down, books (strange for such people), the commonplace and the refined, etc.
November 14, 2012 Arts & Culture Secret Doctrines By Ezra Glinter Theosophy Hall of the United Lodge of Theosophists on East Seventy-Second Street in Manhattan is one of those strange, wonderful, time-warp spaces you can find all over the city, if you know where to look. From threadbare armchairs in the lobby to a library of occult books in the basement, it’s the kind of place that hasn’t changed in decades. It could be a museum, if someone hung a velvet rope. I was at the ULT on a recent Wednesday evening to attend the weekly study group on The Key to Theosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. My interest had been piqued by a new biography, Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality, by Gary Lachman, who (for those interested in such trivia), was the bassist for Blondie before reinventing himself as a writer on occult topics. A man in a brown sweater vest and a silver-haired woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses led the discussion from a semi-circular stage that, under pink and purple lighting, looked like an old-fashioned science fiction set. With the ancient furnishings, solemn proceedings, and casual talk of 1,500-year reincarnation cycles, the scene was delightfully weird. Read More
November 14, 2012 On the Shelf The Word of the Year, and Other News By Sadie Stein Oxford American Dictionaries have chosen the word of the year: GIF. The rationale? “The GIF, a compressed file format for images that can be used to create simple, looping animations, turned twenty-five this year, but like so many other relics of the 80s, it has never been trendier.” The NYPL celebrates the pick thusly. Biographers falling for their subjects: an occupational hazard? “Any biography of a living, breathing and active figure who’s still at the height of his powers is going to have to strike a delicate balance between access and objectivity … It can be very tricky, and it requires real finesse.” Speaking of: the ten grumpiest authors in literary history.
November 13, 2012 In Memoriam Jack Gilbert, 1925–2012 By Sadie Stein “Being alive is so extraordinary I don’t know why people limit it to riches, pride, security—all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the house. And they have to get a car. You can’t see anything from a car. It’s moving too fast. People take vacations. That’s their reward—the vacation. Why not the life?” —The Art of Poetry No. 91