What the hell is "elegy theory"?

From Gawker.com:

"Janette Turner Hospital is the author of Orpheus Lost and other books, and a professor at Columbia. She sent MFA students at her old school, the University of South Carolina, the following note about their inferiority. It is amazing."

From: "HOSPITAL, JANETTE ( Read more... )

"Does ass fucking really require such a high-minded justification? Upon being told someone is fucking someone else in the ass, has anyone ever responded, “What! Why?” I regret to inform the reader that Hass goes on to compare this sex act to the sacking of Troy."

--Michael Robbins, "Are you Smeared with the Juice of Cherries: Uneven pleasures in ( Read more... )

#1. Elif Batuman -- Get a Real Degree

The ideal of self-expression also explains the programme’s privileging of ‘fiction’: where ‘non-fiction’ is burdened by factual content, and ‘literature’ is burdened by a canon of classics, ‘fiction’ is taken to be a pure vessel for inner content."

#2. Joshua Corey -- The Burning Typewriter

"You do need to ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

"important minor poet ( Read more... )

do you

a) Tell them what you think the bulk of your poetry is "about";

b) Make up what the bulk of your poetry is "about";

c) huffily declare that poetry isn't "about" anything -- it's feeling, it's form, it's movement, it's process, it's voice; or

d) change the subject?