Service Economy
It was just about here, five pages in, that I began to feel a desire to write about this extraordinary book. Something about Kunin’s framing of the poem’s underlying aggression got to me. That’s the magic of Love Three. It sneaks up on you, then overpowers you. The relentless, titillating, intellectual pleasure of it. Of candor, of clear, unfashionable, insight, Kunin’s Love Three is a masterpiece.
The Makers’ Spell
I treated myself in the final days of 2018 to a reading of Ann Lauterbach’s book of poems, Spell. It’s an amazing book. Passing my eyes over its pages provoked in me singular journeys down enticing mental avenues until I’d look up from the page in a swoon of contemplation.
Hunting Class
“Hunting in Maine is not obviously riven with centuries of class and privilege” writes Helen Macdonald in H Is for Hawk, a book that, though recommended with high praise by Robert Adamson almost two years ago, I’ve just gotten around to reading.
John Donne, Dodie Bellamy, and the fear of Ayre and Vapours
I just happen to find myself easing out my evenings by reading two works about sickness: John Donne’s twenty-three meditations titled Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and severall steps in my Sicknes and Dodie Bellamy’s When the Sick Rule the World. They are speaking to each other in fascinating ways.
Diabolical Mimicry, Plagiarism by Anticipation, and a Simply Divine Convergence
You can imagine my delight, therefore, when deep into my reading of Coward’s verses, my eye fell upon a poem titled “Convalescence,” which just happened to bear an uncanny resemblance to my own poem, written decades afterwards, “Dividend of the Social Opt Out.