Sunday, August 24, 2008


Verse Daily featured my poem "An Old Story" earlier this month. It appears in the current issue of Cimarron Review.

Today's Boston Sunday Globe pointed me to John Curran's gathering of great diagrams from anthropology and other social sciences, to be found here. Among my favorites (and these really redirect the synapses, I'll tell you!) is the cartoon above, unattributed (Roz Chast?) that can only loosely be construed as a diagram but which has the added virtue of making me laugh like hell.

And finally, I have to make a movie recommendation here. Frozen River is the best drama of working-class life on the margins of poverty that I have ever seen. It is not merely the truth of a situation in which many find themselves at the bottom of a predatory economy, but also a celebration of the resourcefulness, the day to day improvisation and creativity such a life requires. The ethical judgments that people are forced to make are far more complex than the mere adherence to law that passes for morality among the comfortable.

The film is in theaters now. Just see it.