In an interesting (to people like me) bit of analysis, Andrew Seal writes about Infinite Jest:
Specialized knowledges pervade the book—tennis, recreational drug use, optics, burglary, even punting (surely the most narrowly specialized position in football). But one of the more (in)famous elements of “research” in the novel is the filmography Wallace includes in endnote 24. [...]

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[“Neptune Chasing Coronis” (Giulio Carpioni)]
Just some brief reading notes on the rest of Book II of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Callisto Another Jovian rape and another victim who pays the price. Unlike Phaethon, who is the personification of hubris, Callisto appears to do nothing wrong except find herself unable to [...]

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For various reasons, I am no longer maintaining Cosmopoetica. The contact form still works and past content will remain available for reference purposes.
There is no reason to worry about me.
I thank all of you for your time and attention over the past four years!

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In case you need to get pumped up:

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[image by FlickrJunkie]
I think I may have lost my companions on the voyage through Ulysses, a loss I am feeling most keenly after reading this and the previous sections… I would love to know what they make of them.
Episode 15 is loooong, by far the longest of the book. And it reads, to me, [...]

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[image by Ali K.]
The trade of war is over, there are no more battles,but simple murder is still in.The No God, Time, creeps his way, universe after universe, like a great snapping turtleopening its mouth wagging its tongueto look like a worm or leechso deceived hungry fish, every living thingswims in to feed. Quarks [...]

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Via Darren Barefoot comes this Ze Frank video. Not safe for work, but it made me laugh. “Brain Crack” indeed…

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[Ben Folds pic by deovolenti]
Through a chain of circumstances too complicated to recount, I discovered a Paper Cuts Blog playlist by Nick Hornby, perpetual resident on my “reliable favorite authors” shortlist, in which he alluded to collaborating with a favorite musician of mine: Ben Folds:
4) Jen and Justin, Ben Folds. You can’t hear [...]

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Not being one to let the obviousness of a tradition stand in my way– and fully aware that I should be more thankful more often– I join the long list of those concentrating on thankfulness today.
Being thankful reminds me at once of my great fortune and my great shortcomings. The things I am most thankful [...]

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[image by occhiovivo]
OK, so this is section that broke my back the first time I “read” (and the depth of my engagement that time demands the scare quotes) Ulysses, and it very nearly did so again this time. With this section the usefulness of the annotations hit an all-time high. The stylistic changes of [...]

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[image from litmuse; created by Jonathan Day]
Ah, the infamous Gerty MacDowell. This is one section of Ulysses that has remained in my mind from the first reading and even before I had started considering the Homeric parallels, thinking instead of Gerty in light of Hamlet’s mother Gertrude, an analogy that I still can’t carry [...]

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[photo by Walt Jabsco]
A strange, strange section of Ulysses (I should get my terminology straight– these aren’t properly books, but section doesn’t accurately represent the degree to which each is different from one another. Part? Episode?). There are two Cyclops represented: the unknown first-person narrator (the “I” or the “eye”– get it?) and the [...]

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  [art by mikem1115]
This is a late update; I finished the “Sirens” section of Ulysses almost three weeks ago and have finished two more section since. As a result, I have only my marginal notes and poor memory to work from and what sticks in my mind most is the style and structure.
In “Sirens” [...]

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The comments on my post regarding Adam Kirsch’s essay have been quite interesting. It’s clear that I didn’t convey my point particularly well and that some responded without reading Kirsch’s whole piece, relying instead on my clippings. Those that did read the whole piece found other things to disagree about! I want to look more [...]

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[photo by midorionna]
I can’t decide if Adam Kirsch really, really gets it or if he’s so wrong that he’s almost bent back around to righzt, wormhole fashion. The whole essay on writer’s aspiration, fame, and the age of blogs and the Internet is worth a read, but here’s a taste that made me think:
The [...]

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image “borrowed” from stlog
Donald Finkel is one of those poets I’ve yet to get around to seriously reading but whose poems stand out enough that I actually remember them long after serendipitously discovering them in journals such as The Paris Review and The Chicago Review. Finkel’s name also comes up regularly in conversations and interviews [...]

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The people along the sandAll turn and look one way.They turn their back on the land.They look at the sea all day.
As long as it takes to passA ship keeps raising its hull;The wetter ground like glassReflects a standing gull
The land may vary more;But wherever the truth may be–The water comes [...]

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“All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be kind and [...]

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You know that guy who you didn’t invite to your party but shows up anyway, wielding his guitar like a blunt musical instrument, trying hard to be soulful, earnest, totally in love with music but totally and absolutely horrible at making it? That’s me playing chess. I love the game… to the point of literal [...]

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[1955 cover from WikiMedia Commons]
Dolores Haze– the “nymphet” of Vladimir Nabokov’s greatest novel (rightfully found in many lists of best novels)– would be 62 this year… in America at least, where Lolita wasn’t published until 1958.
[photo via David Zellaby]
What would Dolores/Lolita be like today? Would she be a brassy, hyper-sexualized doyenne? A dolorous, [...]

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