Thursday, September 29, 2005



Not all, but too many of the best writers, composers, and artists of our time begin to be acclaimed only when they no longer have anything to say and take to performing instead of stating. This is how they first become accessible to broad taste, which is lazy taste, and by the same token to the processes of publicity and consecration. As long as they were trammeled up in the urgency of getting things said they were too difficult, too 'controversial.'
-Clement Greenberg, Hofmann

Sometimes we discover seemingly surprising chains of connections, like finding out that your next-door neighbour is your brother's housekeeper's cousin. When should we be surprised and when shouldn't we? The six degrees of separation between you and everyone else

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Future must be entrusted to Love alone. May Love be equal to the task!
Not poems about politics. Poems about a father thinking about his child or a mother worrying about her daughters. And kids were saying things like, 'Gee, I never thought about there being children in Iraq.'

As long as one pain is considered better or more real than someone else's pain, as long as people think, 'Your son is not equal to my son,' there can be no peace. We must remind ourselves that fanaticism of any kind is dangerous. We must work every way we can toward wider expression and dialogue. We must keep reading poetry with renewed vigor, for courage and hope. Poetry, the most intimate form of expression, gives us a deeper sense of reality than headlines and news stories ever could


• Naomi Shihab Nye Poet builds bridges, line by line [Correction Appended ; One of these simple,
brilliant ideas got built Catalog your books online ]
• · Risk A Photographer who Takes Risks; How could one resist after reading Lesley Kartali Pick-up lines for feminists
• · · Crowe vs. Crowe ; Britain is terra comis for the United States Is Brand America In Trouble?; High Water How Presidents and citizens react to disaster
• · · · That love was meant for beauty queens and high school girls with clear-skinned smiles who married young and then retired Coming to terms with the truth at 17 ; The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are mostly a somber graveyard of dead books In praise of the novel; Everyone Is Dancing To The Same Song Day! There is some good news to report. After three plus years on the web and well over 1,000 consecutive calendar days scandalized, Girls Are Pretty is going to be a book Girls are pretty
• · · · · Gus Lee mined his isolated boyhood for a novel about the city he loves -- now it's a book club pick One City One Book: China Boy ; Ashley Smith frank about her flaws in new book Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero ; A progressive Christian organization embraces a comedian's unorthodox take on their liturgy Bigger Than Jesus
• · · · · · When Sharni Montgomery came to us with an innovative idea for meeting Sydney's men, we sent her to test it out Classified information ; Sometimes we discover seemingly surprising chains of connections, like finding out that your next-door neighbour is your brother's housekeeper's cousin. When should we be surprised and when shouldn't we? The six degrees of separation between you and everyone else ; To the outside observer, these individuals appear to be remarkably accomplished; The Imposter Jozef Imrich