Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for May 8, 2008

I. Two duos:

A) Richard Brautigan and Jack Spicer (to whom RB dedicated Trout Fishing in America)
B) Rethinking Edmund Wilson on H.P. Lovecraft

II. Dzyd Thomas doesn't like the reviewerish phrase "achingly beautiful":

It's like, really? Achingly? Did you quiver? It's right up there with "intensely personal."

To which I'll add: "brutally honest"!

III. Dzyd/Pretty Standard cross-promotional contest! Here's how to play:

A) Take a favorite group's name.
B) "Translate" it to the late 19th century or the Stone Age.

Thus "TV on the Radio" becomes "Phonograph on the Wireless"!

IV. Dzyd Jordan on Rudy Burckhardt, at the Poetry Foundation site. Favorite bit:

Pictures might be worth a thousand words, but Burckhardt’s photographs are happy with just 14 lines. Each has the characteristic turn—the change of direction and perspective somewhere around line 8 or 9—that transforms a short rhymed poem into a sonnet. In one, a parking lot breaks off at a trash-covered hill leading down to dirt and railroad tracks scattered with tires. In another, a stooped crone, wearing a hat with a giant bow, is carrying a parcel in the crook of her arm; she looks out at the viewer from in front of a billboard featuring the enormous face of a young woman, eyes cast upward. His nudes, too, show wit—one shows a woman reclining face down, a bunch of bananas on her back.

(Also check out the great, evocative photos.)