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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Two Necessities Of Poetry: Plenitude And Exuberance, Marianne Rogoff Feb 2016

Two Necessities Of Poetry: Plenitude And Exuberance, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

"Alicia Ostriker advocates a 'poetics of ardor,' one which is not detached, objective, or merely intellectual, instead a poetry that embraces a big-hearted and practical definition of what erotic means. Dancing at the Devil’s Party is mostly about women’s poetry but Ostriker also reminds us of the wide-reaching sensuality of Whitman, Hopkins, Keats, and other sexy male forebears who permitted love to appear in their work."

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Irreconcilable Differences With God: On "The Monk Downstairs" By Tim Farrington, Marianne Rogoff Feb 2016

Irreconcilable Differences With God: On "The Monk Downstairs" By Tim Farrington, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

"The Monk Downstairs is an easy read about God. It seriously ponders the split between the contemplative life and life in the world while describing the most bedeviling aspects of simple survival on the secular plane."

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Review Of "Into The Beautiful North" By Luis Alberto Urrea, Marianne Rogoff Feb 2016

Review Of "Into The Beautiful North" By Luis Alberto Urrea, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

"There are still many places in the world where electricity is a luxury and bandidos regularly assert power over powerless villages, where a plate of beans has to suffice as daily bread, and the lure of Hollywood cowboys and television heroes encourages the imagination to believe in fantasies. Escapism is a form of hope. The men of Tres Camarones, the dusty pueblito in Sinaloa, Mexico, at the center of Luis Alberto Urrea’s new novel, Into the Beautiful North, have escaped to the U.S. The fantasy was, the men cross the border, acquire riches, and return to the land of lagoons …

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In Search Of Our Brains: On Teaching "Proust Was A Neuroscientist" By Jonah Lehrer, Marianne Rogoff Feb 2016

In Search Of Our Brains: On Teaching "Proust Was A Neuroscientist" By Jonah Lehrer, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

"I have always wanted to teach a semester of freshman English using a single text, moving students via rich allusions out beyond it for further reading according to their individual interests. Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer is a collection of essays linking contemporary findings in neuroscience with visionary knowledge dreamed up by writers and artists a hundred years ago. Concepts like Walt Whitman's poetic "body electric" and Virginia Woolf's psychological "stream of consciousness" are proven to have physical origins in our brains and bodies. I created a whole course around the book in Fall '08 at California College …

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Is The Internet Ruining Our Lives? On "The Cult Of The Amateur" By Andrew Keen, Marianne Rogoff Feb 2016

Is The Internet Ruining Our Lives? On "The Cult Of The Amateur" By Andrew Keen, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

"Not everyone will agree with the premise of Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today’s User-generated Media Are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values, recently out in paperback. Are you a throwback if you do? Are you a cultist if you don’t? Which is worse?"

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A Review Of "Intimate Stranger", Marianne Rogoff Sep 2011

A Review Of "Intimate Stranger", Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

Intimate Stranger is a gorgeous guide to writing and the writing life by this South African man of the world. Born in 1939 to a family dating back to seventeenth century White Afrikaners, Breytenbach grew to oppose South Africa’s twentieth century apartheid system, moved to Paris at age 20, and became a writer, painter, and English teacher. There, he met and married a French woman of Vietnamese descent in 1962 despite his home country’s Immorality Act, which legislated against interracial marriage. During his years of exile he published numerous
books of poetry and prose, including A Season in Paradise (1976; …

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What Is Found, Marianne Rogoff May 2009

What Is Found, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

The book cover, with a wooden rocking cradle and baby shoes dangling from its corner, conjures baby boys, boys who become men, men who become fathers… the ongoing cycle.

The man in Patrick Somerville’s novel,The Cradle, is right in the thick of that terrific, life-altering stage of life when his pregnant wife is about to deliver her miracle. He is present for her as onlooker and provider and partner: at her beck and call, basically. In her eighth month, her power at its peak, Marissa makes a teensy request of Matt: She wants their baby to sleep in …

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Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed, Marianne Rogoff Apr 2009

Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

Set inside New York City’s hip-hop scene and the surrounding neighborhoods, ghettoes, and clubs that house its supporting players, Mark Blatte’s Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed is shaded by skin of varying color and thickness. A broad cross-section of races shows up, an extreme mix of attitudes and sizes, with and without connections, talent, ambition, or moral compasses. There are hierarchies of respect, hills and mountains of greed. There’s lust, pride, people climbing over each other, positioning themselves, stomping all those who would get in their way.

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Reviews In Brief / The Wasp Eater, Marianne Rogoff Aug 2004

Reviews In Brief / The Wasp Eater, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

In William Lychak's first novel, the child is witness. Daniel, a 10-year- old living in New England, sees everything, processes it, trying to grasp the mysterious, mistaken ways of adults: his mother, Anna; his father, Bob; and his grown cousin Joelyn.

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Reviews In Brief / World Famous Love Acts, Marianne Rogoff May 2004

Reviews In Brief / World Famous Love Acts, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

Brian Leung's writing is exquisite, deceptively plain, deeply felt and spiritually high, with dead-on depictions of the world as it is and people coping such as they can. He doesn't limit himself to particular character types but eyes all kinds with compassion, true empathy and bursts of clairvoyance.

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Reviews In Brief / Do The Blind Dream?, Marianne Rogoff May 2004

Reviews In Brief / Do The Blind Dream?, Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

On the last page of "Do the Blind Dream?" you'll find a character saying, "One morning, more than thirty years later, I was sitting at a bar in Paris drinking a coffee when, for no particular reason, I thought about ..." and he will wonder if things might have been different if. ...

This is the theme in many stories here: a turning point or moment or scene that has stuck in the mind for 30 or 50 years, and how we are formed by the mistakes and legacies of our parents and ancestors, even after we have run away …

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