Links
A link for people who love their poetry and coffee, and because I received an email asking if I knew a “poem pertaining to coffee.” Last summer I read a beautiful poem about coffee, or rather a café in Hungary that served the best java. It was published in Alimentum. I couldn’t locate the copy of the journal. It will be a delicious discovery once found.
Why should contemprary poets care what Wikipedia does or does not find “noteable?”
YAYss! Thank you Deborah. Couldn’t agree with you more. See previous post for context. Link
“The surface of graphic design”
1) “the equal footing on which everything lends itself to art”
2) “the surface of conversion where words, forms, and things exchange roles”
3) “the surface of equivalence” between “the purity of art” and “forms of life.”
“Independent bookstores do everything big corporate bookstores do, with only one significant difference: Independents do it better.”
Before audio books…
“Of all the repetitive, mind-numbing jobs in the late 19th century, cigar-rolling was special. “Unlike sewing clothes, mining coal or forging steel, it was blessedly quiet. And thus cigar workers, whether in Chicago or Havana, were the first ones in their time who managed to introduce that vital commodity — distraction — onto the work floor.“Using their own wages, and backed by a powerful union, they paid for a “reader” who sat in an elevated chair and began the morning with the news and political commentary. By the afternoon, he would usually have switched to a popular novel. The 100 or so rollers on the floor were his captive audience, listening as they worked.”
(via NYT — thanks AdPulp) Link
Socrates: wanted dead or alive
“Given the choice between Socrates dead or alive, Western thinkers have preferred him dead. At least as a symbol. A symbol of what? That’s where it gets complicated.”
Call me a snob, but really, we’re a nation of dunces
“The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.”
“I thought Europe was a country”
“Ms. Jacoby… said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.” Link “I thought Europe was a country”
Coffeehouse Junkie 