Old-timey Reviews Make My Day

Solid review of the 600 Grant Street Rooftop.

Absolutely solid.


In case you can't see the text, Beth L writes:

I attempted to land my human powered auto-gyro on this roof top during my excursion from Whetherbee to Quintorp. I found the ground crew most amiable and helpful. The view of Pitts-boro was splendid as well. Bully!

What is a poet?

I found this perspective from Tony Hoagland on youtube this morning. It was recorded in October of 2011 at the Poetry Foundation as part of the Chicago Ideas Week series (think Ted Talks with Chicago folks). In his talk, Hoagland suggests that poets are the complainers of society. Their pain is our pain, articulated. Where as some are forced to speechlessness by some events, the poet is forced to speech.

I don't mean for my summary to make Hoagland's talk sound romantic. It's not. And, it's not finger-wagging either. It's a clear argument that good poetry comes from that person we don't usually want to listen to--that person who our culture, with its relentless enthusiasm for positivity, asks us to ignore. Hoagland uses personal anecdotes and well-known poems to make his point. If you write poetry, make a cup of tea/grab a drink and listen closely. It's inspiring.

After listening, I was compelled to reconsider what I am giving to my writing group for tomorrow's workshop. Will I turn in schlock molded from the shape of my comfortable middle-class life or articulate deformity?

How is that writing group going, you ask? Well, one of is in now New York. Our Friday afternoon "band practice" is a bit more precious now. We meet at 30th Street Station just a few hours before she catches her train home to her new city. Weird to write that.

Victory is mine, Inbox!

 

The relentless flow of time will soon enough deposit a mountain of emails on me, but for now I have this little celebration from the programmers at Google. Bless them.

April Madness Continues at Powell's Books

Not many surprises this round. Perhaps Gary Snyder losing to Theodore Rhoeotke and Walt Whitman to Emily Dickinson--but those juggernauts were fairly evenly matched going into this round.

http://www.powells.com/poetrymadness

Oh, and poetry is 15% off this month.

National Survey of College Graduates

The National Survey of College Graduates is an effort by the National Science Foundation to gather data on the employment particulars of individuals with college degrees of various levels. It's a massive survey with tens of thousands of respondents (according to the Office of Management and Budget), and for the past three months, the Census Bureau has sent me a few pieces of snail mail encouraging me to take the survey. Last weekend, I finally did (well, the online version anyway--I'm sure it's the same). It was kind of fun, actually.

As I clicked on various responses and entered information, I thought about the work my college degrees prepared me to do, and every few pages, I sat back and thought about the trajectory of my life over the past twenty years. I thought about several jobs I had--the ones closely related to my education and the ones that weren't. I thought about the degree to which our society values the work I do. I considered how rewarded I am by the work I do--that's a series of questions on the survey, actually: all about salary, benefits, and satisfaction. I considered those I know who aren't satisfied by their work--those with work thanks to their degrees, and those with work unrelated to their degrees.

The results are available for download here at this NSF webpage. When I get around to downloading and reading this thirty-seven megabyte file, I'll post an update.

One more thing: Besides gathering data on college graduate employment, I'm sure there's some interesting research going on into the workings of a survey this big. I mean, how does one manage a voluntary survey this large?

Perhaps with rhetoric like this:

Start with Out-of-date Science

I love this opening from the Reanimation Library's latest "Word Processor" feature:

If you want to learn anything, start with out-of-date science. You can read the latest reports of scientific journals, study advanced biology and chemistry and so forth, but that will only get you so far. You need disreputable texts, you need fanciful conjecture, old wives' tales, hasty assumption, poor observation, bias, faulty method.

Colin Dickey takes us through C. P. Idyll's Abyss, and in the process reminds us of the folly and beauty of taxonomic quests. All taxonomic quests seem beautiful and foolish, but so deep underwater, so far from sunlight--all of that work is under more pressure and a whole lot less light.

March Madness Ends. April Madness Begins

Greatest Living Poet? Greatest Deceased Poet? Greatest Poet in Translation?

Oh, it's on alright.

Powell's Books, perhaps the coolest independent bookstore to also be gigantic, has created a bracket system for the 2013 Month of Poetry, which as we all know, is April. Head over to what the folks at Powell's are dubbing Poetry Madness and vote in this single elimination tournament. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and vote as you see fit in this first round.

First round eliminations will be difficult on all of us, I know. Is it unfair that Li Young-Lee has been pitted against Kevin Young? Is it nonsensical that Billy Collins is up against Mary Oliver? Perhaps, but the league commissioners decided this, in their own words, as:

Three or four of us chatted over coffee and doughnuts.

Powell's has been in Portland, Oregon for decades, and silliness like this is part of the culture. A cat, Fup, inhabited the store for years, and in the early days of Powell's online presence, monthly email newsletters included a short section on the cat's adventures as well as reviews, and interviews.

Customer service is good--and I enjoy shopping from them. I don't know if I'm going to vote in Poetry Madness, but I thought I should share it--and the store--with others.


Who am I kidding? Of course I'll vote.

I liked this short animated film, and now I recommend it to you.

Two years ago, one late Saturday night, as I climbed into the rabbit-warren of the internet exploring yet another curiosity (How does one make cheese? How many spoken languages are left on planet Earth?), I found references to this short animated film, The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl. I wasn't able to actually find the film, just references to it.

It wasn't on Amazon, Netflix, or iTunes, so I wrote the director and asked him how to get it. He sent me a copy for free. He's that cool. The film is sad, funny, adorable and very clever, and I'm happy to report that it's now available on iTunes. Yay!

You can get it here on iTunes, or just go to iTunes and search burrowing owl. Now if only Amazon would distribute it. Amazon needs to show more respect to makers of short films.

Oh, what was I searching for that night two years ago? I was looking for videos of burrowing owls. An animated short? Close enough. Actually, better.