How To Be a Poet by Wendell Berry : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

How To Be a Poet by Wendell Berry : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Caught in the creative act indeed

I guess if you're gonna fail, fail big: http://gawker.com/5651154/columbia-writing-professor-sends-worlds-haughtiest-email-to-former-students

That's not the fail part though. This is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/columbia-fiction-professo_b_746769.html

I had the opportunity to meet Professor H. soon after she joined USC. I found her to be incredibly, utterly arrogant. I was so off-put I wrote about it in my Rain Man journal and henceforth had nothing to do with her vaunted "Caught in the Creative Act" guest lecture series or anything else at the University of South Carolina English Department. That was several years ago.

I did see her give a eulogy for Joseph Bruccoli though. She was friends with him, and Bruccoli himself had been close with James Dickey (whose teaching position Hospital had inherited at USC). So it's not hard to see continuity with the showbiz/adman conception of literary self-promotion. Henry Hart called his authoritative biography of Dickey The World as a Lie. It's great when it sells, but I'm not buying.

Frederick Ingram
B.A. English, USC, 1992

Darling Nikki Haley

I knew a cougar named Nikki
She was a Republican queen
Saw her in the State House lobby
Talking about “transparency”
She said “Show me yours, I’ll show u mine”
And I could not resist ’cos Nikki is so fine

She took me 2 her sister’s
And I just couldn’t believe my eyes
She had so many crystals and beads
Any New Age thing you could try
She said “Sikh and ye shall find”
The lights went out
Nikki’s sister blew my mind

NIKKI

© 2010 Frederick Ingram
All rights reserved

The press corps started spinning
Or maybe it was my blame
I won’t tell u all she did to me
But my blog will never be the same
Our politics will kick yo behind
They’ll show you no mercy
Best hold that party line

DARLING NIKKI

Woke up the next morning
Nikki wasn’t there
I looked all over and I found
My cell phone on the stairs
It said “Thank u 4 a funky time”
I’ll always have Little Nikki on my mind

Oh Nikki ohhh
It’s your sick “Sic” Willie!

Laura's original---on 3 x 5 cards

Ah, so son Dmitri didn't burn Vladimir Nabokov's last book per instructions. I think the world will forgive him. Nikolai Gogol really did burn his own last novel, and wouldn't it be great to know what it said now?

As I have been into 3 x 5 cards, I thought this from today's Washington Post was really interesting:

At the time of Nabokov's death, "The Original of Laura" also existed as a series of index cards, more than a hundred of them, in no obvious order. This Knopf edition consists of photographs of his miscellaneous handwritten cards, with a printed transcription of their text below, in a tentative order determined by Dmitri Nabokov.

The cards themselves may be detached from the book and, if desired, rearranged by the reader.

I wonder if the Levenger stationery catalog is going to see a sales spike.

Toronto Star don't need eidtors

This is sad on many levels: http://torontoist.com/2009/11/disgruntled_star_editor_takes_revenge.php. Yet predictable. p.s. Don't they also own Harlequin Books?

Deep thoughts

A photo to inspire contemplation, deep thoughts, etc. (c) 2009 Frederick Ingram.