The Week We Sought Closure

As we fly bravely into the future, we’re checking a lot of baggage.

This week, we buried the dead, recollected in tranquility, and mulled over the minutia of the past so hard that we mulled right through lunch time. By the time we looked up from mulling, it was almost the weekend.

Monday (appropriately enough) was Sylvia Plath’s birthday. We curated some Plath-related links and wondered why she’s subject to so much amateur psychoanalysis and how things might have been different.

Once again, we toasted the often imitated, never duplicated big-bearded sage of the Beats.

We said goodbye to the celebrated Urdu poet Samina Raja.

Last time we checked in with perpetual ray of sunshine Donald Hall, he was mourning his waning libido. This week, he reminded us that a performing poet’s pleasures are fleeting—it's basically poetry's answer to "Turn the Page." There’s also some stuff about cheerleaders.

We read this exquisitely haunting piece about what happens to American poets after they die, at least physically.

We mourned a passing era of big publishing.

We recalled the mid ‘00s, when Brooklyn was the place to be for the young, sarcastic, and photogenic. That seems like a long time ago. If you’re still around, why not shave your moustache, throw out your ripped neon leggings, and hoof it to Queens? Or Australia? Or Ohio?

We took out something we spent ten minutes writing in college and spent half the night rewriting it. We went revisionist.

We heard from a writer trying to make sense of another writer trying to make sense of the enduring legacy of Emily Dickinson. Now we can’t stop humming “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

But all is not lost! The best days may not necessarily be behind us! We could live to see another Dickinson! Or Homer! Or Kant!

Either way, we don’t condone mooning over the past when there is good news to be celebrated, not to mention an important election in progress. Saisir le jour!