Sherry Chandler » 2006 » February » 22
No wonder some Eastern Kentuckians were skeptical about Neil Armstrong’s 1969 walk on the moon. They thought NASA had put Mr. Armstrong in a space suit and photographed him at a strip mine.
These are the closing words of Janet Maslin’s review of Lost Mountain (Riverhead, 2006) in the NYTimes. Clara Bingham’s review in the Courier-Journal is here.
I cribbed these links from The Kentucky Literary Newsletter, which also tells me that Reece has been awarded Columbia University’s John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism. He will be signing at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexingon on Monday (Feb 27).
The Kentucky Literary Newsletter is sponsored by Wind Publications, which has its own book about mountaintop removal: Missing Mountains.
This post was written by sherry
Oh Ye Gods why should my Poor Resistless Heart
Stand to oppose thy might and Power
At Last surrender to cupids feather’d Dart
And now lays Bleeding every Hour
For her that’s Pityless of my grief and Woes
And will not on me Pity take
Ill sleep amongst my most Inviterate Foes
And with gladness never with to Wake
In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close
That in an enraptured Dream I may
In a soft lulling sleep and gentle repose
Possess those joys denied by Day
(This poem is from a diary Washington kept during his time on a surveying expedition in 1749-1750. He would have been 17 - 18 years old. Some think he may merely have copied the poem. Either way, I’d say he was probably a better Father of the Country than poet, though I wouldn’t want to be held to account for anything I wrote at 17.)
This post was written by sherry
137. The concept that the poem “expresses” the poet, vocally or otherwise, is at one with the whole body of thought identified as Capitalist Imperialism.
138. If poetry is to be perfect, it cannot be all-knowing. If it is to be all-knowing, it cannot be perfect.
139. I began writing seriously a decade ago and was slow to learn. For years I was awkward, sloppy, given to overstatement, the sentimental image, the theatrical resolution. Yet, subtracting these, I am amazed at the elements, all formal and/or conceptual, which have remained constants. It is those who tell me who I am.
— from Ron Silliman’s The Chinese Notebook
This post was written by sherry
