Things I read today / A link in time deserves another nine

1) Coetzee in the NYRB on Marquez, and through him, on Cervantes and Kawabata. Talk about Nobel Prize overload. Am very kicked because Coetzee discusses the connection between Delgadina and Dulcinea that I wrote about in my review here. Stockholm, here I come!

2) This gorgeous Louise Gluck poem on Slate. Also, on Slate, a round-up of un-pretty love poems down the ages - notable for Bishop's glorious take on Casabianca and that stunningly beautiful Keats poem Pinsky close with.

3) Rana Dasgupta's Tokyo Cancelled, which I finally got around to reading, and which I've reviewed here (says he, in an act of shameless self-promotion)

4) My copy of Robert Lowell's Collected Poems (all 1186 pages of it) that arrived last week:

Dark swallows will doubtless come back killing
the injudicious nightflies with a clack of the beak;
but these that stopped full flight to see your beauty
and my good fortune...as if they knew our names -
they'll not come back. The thick lemony honeysuckle,
climbing from earthroot to your window,
will open more beautiful blossoms to the evening;
but these...like dewdrops, trembling, shining, falling,
the tears of day - they'll not come back...
Some other love will sound his fireword for you
and wake your heart, perhaps, from its cool sleep;
but silent, absorbed, and on his knees,
as men adore God at the altar, as I love you -
don't blind yourself, you'll not be loved like that.

- Robert Lowell, 'Will not come back'

5) The journal article that this news report in the New York Times points to (hat tip: Veena). Which turns out to be valid for 50 - 79 year old, post-menopausal women, thank you very much.

6) Lee Siegel's hilarious take on the letters that publishers send to book reviewers with advance copies of books.

7) The news that Dianne Reeves won a Grammy for the soundtrack to Good Night and Good Luck. Maybe there is something to these award shows after all? (Naah, it's obviously a fluke).

Categories: Links, Poetry