Culturewatch
Talk About “Abortion”
It is more crucial than ever to speak about “abortion rights,” not choice. The word “choice” is meaningless and always has been a running-scared retreat from the real matter of bodily sovereignty for females. Biological determinism is a social idea. Just like social Darwinism, capitalism, and religion.
Razzle Dazzle: Alison Stone’s New Poems
Alison Stone has been a vital voice in First of the Month‘s mixes for nearly 20 years. The following poems from her new collection, Dazzle, testify to her undimmed instinct for happiness inside the dailiness of life. Not that she’s Ms. Beamish. Stone often gives First first shot at her more engagé poems. One of them recently got up Facebook’s nose.
On the Block II: Excerpt from Gilbert Sorrentino’s “Crystal Vision”
What follows is a swatch of Crystal Vision (1981)–a novel of almost pure dialogue by the late Gilbert Sorrentino.
Hooking Up: Benjamin DeMott on Tom Wolfe
Benjamin DeMott published this summative review of a late collection of Tom Wolfe’s work in 2001. It makes a good case for the reviewer (whose own work has seemed fresh to pundits lately).
On Waller-Bridge
When asked (by your editor) if she enjoyed Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s shows, Laurie Stone replied “I am a huge and maybe the hugest admirer of Fleabag and Killing Eve…She is brilliant, and brilliantly alternative, food for the starving.”
John Berryman On News We Can’t Use
Who can keep up? It wasn’t so long ago that we were concerned because the print press couldn’t keep up with the 24/7 news channels, which had scandals and disasters on the air while they were still in progress. Now, the 24/7 news channels can’t keep up with themselves: by the time they’ve assembled a panel of Wise Ones to analyze the most recent infamy, another one has unfolded. Or two. Or three. There is no pause, no day without too many tales to tell, let alone to tell well.
Which is why John Berryman’s 1939 poem “World-Telegram” has new currency. It is about the weight of headlines, of leads, of information that can barely be understood, let alone borne.
The Country & the City: Poems by Adrian Blevins
The first two poems here come from Adrian Blevins’ new collection, “Appalachians Run Amok”. Ms. Blevins’ exemplary wit sparked our current batch of posts (below) on the Country and the City.
Bitter Geezer (Tale of Tubb)
Proto-punk Richard Meltzer was ready for country before most rock critics of his generation. This 1973 review of an Ernest Tubb album was more than a hoot.
The Little House We Live In (& On the Rez)
Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder traces the Little House books’ role in American culture wars.
William Hazlitt on a Sporting Life
C.L.R. James mused in “Beyond a Boundary”–his far out book on cricket and “what men live by”–that he hoped to “write of the game and its players as Hazlitt wrote of fives and Cavanagh.” James knew his 19th C. Brit culturalists and his praise led your editor to the following swatch from Hazlitt’s “Table Talk,” in which the eminent pre-Victorian paid tribute “to the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived…”