Not long after James Lasdun released his new book, Give Me Everything You Have, Jessica Freeman-Slade reviewed it for The Millions. Now, in the latest issue of the LRB, Nick Richardson offers his own take. (You could also check out our own Mark O’Connell’s interview with Lasdun.)
Tale of a Stalker, Ctd.
“The Soul of the Censor”
Recommended reading: Robert Darnton writes for The New York Review of Books blog about the history and politics of censorship.
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In a Room of the Auction House
“It can not be that I monopolize / The making of the songs that give you praise / Or that such pools as are your dearest eyes / Have just one bather through the unclear days. / Then, let me take my place amid the pack, / If I so pack my songs with your rare worth / There were no quality they then should lack / But they were bettered by that happy death.” A previously unpublished Ezra Pound sonnet selling at auction is always newsworthy–especially when it fetches nearly $12,000. Here is a related Millions piece about the difficult poetry of Ezra Pound, John Berryman, and Ted Berrigan.
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I will tell you this Rosalina, not as a taunt or a threat but as an evocation of joy.
From Werner Herzog's letter to Rosalina, the woman he employs to keep his house: "Music is futile and malicious. So please, if you require entertainment while organizing the recycling, refrain from the ‘pop radio’ I was affronted by recently. May I recommend the recitation of some sharp verse. Perhaps by Goethe. Or Schiller. Or Shel Silverstein at a push."
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I Am What I Am
Pharrell Williams is suing Black Eyed Peas member Will.I.Am over the latter’s insistence that he owns copyright on the phrase, “I Am.” If the judge in this case is truly worth their salt, they should force both musicians to settle this matter with a no-holds-barred John Clare-esque “I Am” poem off.