When the poet and critic Ezra Pound issued his famous literary proclamation to “make it new,” he uttered a phrase that became so identified with modernist literature that it’s difficult to imagine modernism happening without it. Of course, like many fitting pronouncements, over the years this one’s become a cliché, having been extensively quoted and […]
Making It New (Again) Read More »
When Hoagy Carmichael and his friends Bob Gilette and Bix Beiderbecke went on a road trip to Chicago, their first stop was Lincoln Gardens, the club where King Oliver’s band was appearing. Many years later, Carmichael wrote about that night: As I sat down to light my first muggle, Bix gave the sign to a
Tuba Skinny: Back Down on the Ground Read More »
“Every good manager effectively threatens his players with professional extermination if they don’t give him the best effort that they are capable of giving; Casey Stengel, Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and Earl Weaver are masters at it, as was Durocher. They are not nice people. . . .” – Bill James, The Bill James Baseball
Grading and the Fear of God Read More »
I have taught many resistant students: gang members, drug dealers, disaffected kids with no direction, shy introverts, you name it. But the one thing I could always use to level the playing field was Shakespeare. You’d think something more in line with The Outsiders or some other gang-themed novel would have done the trick, but
Can Shakespeare Save Lives? Read More »
“The herdsmen wandering by the lonely rills, marks where they lie on the scarred mountain flanks. Remembering that mild morning when the hills shook to the roar of guns, and those wild Franks surged upward from the sea.”[1] –The ANZAC Book As morning broke on Sunday April 25th 1915, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
Blank Pages Along the Beach: Soldiers’ Diaries of the Gallipoli Campaign Read More »
People probably invented poetry to help them remember things they wanted to remember – what their gods and ancestors did, how to get from one place to another, what plants were good to eat and what plants were poisonous – all sorts of things that rhythmic patterns and regular rhyme schemes made easier to remember.