Poetry is a violently opinionated business. The closest I have come to a civil war was – quite seriously – a conference on versification. Poetry lovers, however, tend to be polite people who express their feelings in convoluted ways. Hence, perhaps, their love of poetry, but also the incoherent quality of much poetry criticism.
‘The danger is in the neatness of identifications,’ warned the 23-year-old Samuel Beckett in his first published sentence, opening a 1929 collection of essays bearing the catchy title Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. The work in question being Finnegans Wake, a volume of arid virtuosity described by Clive James […]
I’ve despaired for the art of criticism in the past few decades, losing hope at times. Perhaps the advent of theory is to blame, with its formulaic thinking and tendencies toward opacity and stale jargon. In any case, it seems difficult for critics to get a purchase on actual texts in ways that don’t dampen […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm