rakemag Now that we’ve all been turned on to Pinot Noir thanks to Sideways, here’s a documentary to explain why that same film so brutally maligned Merlot. Mondovino is a two-hour-plus primer on the controversies and conspiracies that make up the deliciously lurid wine world, investigating the grapes and the growers, the winemakers and the wine … Read more
In the forty-eight years that Playboy has run an annual music poll, can you believe that only this year did it begin including a best jazz artist? That seems like a big oversight, considering that jazz makes an excellent backdrop for a little boot-knocking (as Playboy itself put it, the genre “holds a special spot … Read more
The tone of Paul Krugman in this morning’s NY Times was the first in a long time in which Krugman seemed to give in to his pessimism that the current administration will ever do the right thing–economically or otherwise. As his colleague Bob Herbert so aptly described it today, we’re ruled by “small men committed … Read more
Well, it’s tax day, and in deference to all those people cavorting around the capital, hoping to catch a glimpse of their heroes David Strom and Michele Bachmann, here’s the most painful poem I know. It must be what it feels like for all of them today, for which I can’t really say I’m sorry. … Read more
William Wordsworth – Composed Upon Westminster Bridge Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open … Read more
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, … Read more
Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes by Billy Collins First, her tippet made of tulle, easily lifted off her shoulders and laid on the back of a wooden chair. And her bonnet, the bow undone with a light forward pull. Then the long white dress, a more complicated matter with mother-of-pearl buttons down the back, so … Read more
Marginalia by Billy Collins Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other … Read more
Catullus 51 translated by James Michie To me he seems godlike, in my eyes even More than Divine (if that’s not sacriligious), The man who sits beside you all day gazing, Hearing all day Your musical laughter. Dazed by love, he loses The use of all his senses. Oh, the moment, I see you, Lesbia, … Read more
I can’t think of a better poem than Catullus 5 for a warm spring day. I recited this at a friend’s wedding once and the bride swooned. Let us live, my darling, and let us love And let us regard the disapproving looks of the old men As we would a penny in the gutter. … Read more