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“Inch Worm” (or The Other Kind of Counterpoint) – Daniel Brown
When we think of counterpoint, we’re usually thinking of the "imitative" kind, where melodies (or bits of them) echo one another. This is certainly the kind most of us encounter first, when we learn…
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On the Road to the prison of La Santé: even Gallimard’s new translation of 1984 can’t conjure lit from boilerplate [by Tracy Danison]
“Oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clements … Here comes a grinding machine to grind down your head!” The iconography has changed a lot since the 40s – 50s. The older edition…
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Impudent Prophetic Plagiarism: 2 – Daniel Brown
In yesterday's post we saw Mozart focusing his Futurescope forty years forward, into the sound-world of Schubert. As it turns out, this gizmo had a range substantially greater still. If you're a nostalgist and/or…
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“The Inventors” [by Jim Dolot]
The man who invented spitting,Archimandrus of Boeotia,Was otherwise undistinguished,And tends to be underrated and overlookedBecause of his contemporary, Thespis,Who invented the drama, and Gogulus,Who invented existentialism.This is how it happened.There was a drought, and…
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Next Line, Please: Checkmate in 10 Moves [by Virginia Valenzuela]
This week on Next Line, Please, quizmaster Lehman has provided a new prompt: a game of poetry chess in which the first and last moves are already determined, and you, the writer, have 10…
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Impudent Prophetic Plagiarism: 1 – Daniel Brown
I once heard a lecture by the late great critic and pianist (or, as he would have said, pianist and critic) Charles Rosen on two strands of Romanticism: a backward-looking "classicizing" one (exemplified by…
