April 25, 2005

Repellant and inauthentic behavior  

1. Jan Frel on Arianna's big idea: "I think the Huffington Post will eventually deal a great deal of harm to pundit celebrity because these elites have shed the media that distributed them to fame, and jumped into an arena where any 'anonymous individual' has access to the same tools they do to communicate, imitate, and criticize."

2. Eugene Volokh makes some reassuring observations about the inclusion of commas and periods within quotation marks and the generalization of this practice to other kinds of punctuation (eg question marks).

3. Via Political Wire (appropriately enough), here's the story of how Ratzinger ascended to the papacy. It's not quite Godfather 3, but it has its moments of intrigue. (By the way, if you think those Curio Cardinals seem powerful now, you should check out this bit from the post below: back when, they got to choose the date Easter was celebrated.)

4. This article on poetry publishing (recommended by Shanna Compton) might depress you if you care about poetry (either as reader or writer). One piece of rather hopeful advice it misses, though, is this: start a blog.

5. And here's an update on the aproximately 15,000 objects stolen from the Baghdad museum during the first days of the American invasion.

Comments
shanna  {April 27, 2005}

hi paul. i didn't find that piece depressing. i thought it was actually refreshing to see a poetry publisher talking about the difference between the art of poetry and the business of publishing it. i think folks who have trouble discerning the difference between "why" and "how" are set up for the most disappointment. but i have long known that most of the poetry that i value isn't equally valued by the market, i.e. my job as an editor for a small press. what i love as a poet & reader is sometimes different than what i can afford to take a chance on behalf of the press, and i am *thrilled* to see micropresses, self-published chapbooks, blogs and other DIY outlets popping up all over. it reduces the art's dependence on a market that has proven itself indifferent if not unkind.


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