Though Ezra Pound said of Frederick Nietzsche’s “will to power” that “[n]othing more vulgar, in the worst sense of the word, has ever been sprung on a dallying intelligentsia” (Feng Lan, Ezra Pound and Confucianism 119), the true relationship between Nietzsche’s theory and Pound’s own “will toward order” belies the poet’s loud protestations. Pound desired … Continue reading Pound, Nietzsche, and the “Will to Power”
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“I’m Taking My Talents to a Four-Year College”: Rejecting the LeBronification of Tomorrow’s Workforce
Atossa Abrahamian of The New Inquiry is right: four years of undergraduate work (or six-plus years of postsecondary study) simply does not make for good worker bees. The same skills typically required of a successful college student — independent thinking, self-management, critical reflection, and a not-so-subtle aversion to established dogmas — are antithetical to those … Continue reading “I’m Taking My Talents to a Four-Year College”: Rejecting the LeBronification of Tomorrow’s Workforce
The Dialectical Objectivist: Louis Zukofsky’s “Mantis” Poems
In Revolution of the Word, Jerome Rothenberg introduces Louis Zukofsky’s Objectivist poetics by stating that it entails “[n]ot a polarization into object/subject but a dialectic” (239). Unfortunately, Rothenberg offers no further commentary regarding this conception of “dialectic,” and his nebulous use of the term fails to say much about how readers should approach works like … Continue reading The Dialectical Objectivist: Louis Zukofsky’s “Mantis” Poems
William Rossetti: The Brit Who (Basically) Saved Walt Whitman from Obscurity
One of the primary attractions to Whitman for critics and readers on both sides of the Atlantic was his essential other-ness, his status as an outsider representing an image of America that promoted England’s former colonies as a land of untrammeled freedom, a natural wilderness replete with opportunities to ignore the established conventions of decorum … Continue reading William Rossetti: The Brit Who (Basically) Saved Walt Whitman from Obscurity
Poetry, Politics, and Wilco
I wonder why we listen to poets When nobody gives a fuck —Wilco, “Ashes of American Flags” In “Ashes of American Flags,” Wilco engages in a project akin to that of the language poets from the 1960s and 70s: the juxtaposition of artistic sentiment with capitalist ideology as a means of critiquing a prevailing social … Continue reading Poetry, Politics, and Wilco
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