Buggeryville

Over here (especially in the comments) I'm talking about greatness and disposability with Mark Truscott, and over here Rodney Koeneke said some stuff about the Spare Room Centenary and wrote a cento from it (and I'm a fan of his recent use of color-coding), and here Johannes Göransson quotes a nice bit from Lyn Hejinian in an ongoing conversation he's having about translation which I find problematic but provocative, and here Sina Queyras talks about all sorts of interesting things which have led to a commentsplosion that I have not yet put my unequal e-quill onto.

So that's a lot of nice talking.

Unrelatedly:

When I was in Portland people kept asking me if I'd been asked to read in Toronto yet. And I had to explain that, in Canada, I seem to be known more for writing criticism than for writing poetry. Which, all agreed, is insane, but then I think it's insane that I might be known at all. Anyway, outside of the little twitterms on the side of this blog, I haven't written any poetry in Canada yet, which is fine, since they have enough poetry here. You'd think they'd have enough criticism here, too, but perhaps not. Well, on we go, trying to perceive the bigger potholes in the road and to fill them in as best we can.

1. Kasey Mohammad on the holy grail of relevance.
2. You've seen this by now, but it's pretty nice.
3. The second of these meditations on the semicolon by Gary Barwin is particularly striking.
4. The Atlas of True Names, an etymological map, could be truer, or perhaps less true...
5. The last word on Žižek will probably not be the last.

1. English syntax the to anew change. (via)
2. British English, elaborated, is different from American.
3. Is this the new old new old conceptual poetics? (via)
4. An alliterative anti-alcohol argument from 1882. (Craig alerted me to it)
   
5. James Earl Jones recites the alphabet, and it's almost like a Warhol screen test, with minimal (liminal?) content.
   

1. A short documentary on Jordan Scott, stuttering, and poetics thereof. (Part 2. I'm not clear on whether this is the documentary that aired on Bravo or just connected to it.)
2. Oh sure, now that I've moved away, there's a contest for writing five words about Portland's transit system! (via Silliman)
3. Dystopian lexicography.
4. Craig Conley's take on "for Gale Czerski" continues its spread across the internet.
5. On a well-annotated reviewer's copy.

1. Cradle the sonnet in your hands.
2. The Toronto Transit Map, anagrammed.
3. Yes. (Rather than: No.)
4. A method for presenting translation. (Via Languagehat)
   
5. Someone recently reached Buggeryville by searching google.ca for "canadian poet blogs"; this blog is hit #30, which cannot possibly be right.
   

I think the new rule will be that as soon as I get five links, I will dump them.

1. Love poetry and advertising.
2. A new high (or perhaps low, I can't quite tell) in inflation.
3. Another look at lost letters.
4. A slightly out of date cheat sheet to the Toronto (or, Canadian) poetry scene.
5. On philosophers and poets. (#2 is quite nice. #3 suggests Plato was a successful philosopher and a failed poet, which only makes sense if you hate life. How does Wittgenstein fit into #3? In #6, the mathematician would favor the poet.)
   

How to read the Jumble. Those Wordsworth sonnets on capital punishment that Jackson Mac Low mentioned. Another example of cod Hebrew (after a long bit about GI troubles, you might want to skim down for the images of cod Hebrew). Further adventures in homophonic translation.

Just two. Minidump. We'll see if this becomes a habit.

Further adventures in Neo-Benshi.

The medieval stanza-wrangler.

Also, seriously, don't forget my reading on Saturday. There's a house show/farewell party afterwards, which you should attend. See you there!