What could possibly be better than midcentury
Belgian surrealist prose poetry? Belgian surrealist prose poetry read on
the BBC! Zip forward to the 1:02 mark of this BBC "Words and
Music" broadcast to hear the great Samuel West read a
translation I did with Jean-Luc Garneau of "Hierarchy: A Night," a
little Kafkaesque number by Gabriel and Marcel Piqueray.
In other news, Ian
Duhig has some nice things to say about my book The Poet Resigns. He says I
write "clearly and without jargon about modern
poetry with a firm grasp of its historical roots." He also notes
that I "caused something of a furore" with my article on Cambridge
poetry, despite being quite sympathetic to it, and offers the kind of praise I
like best when he says " I don’t agree with everything on this book,
but I do recommmend it without qualification." (Well, okay, that's the
kind of praise I like second best — what I really like is Michael Robbins'
comment that I am "The slobby poor white guy's Janet Malcolm").
