I’m not a poet (anymore). I’m not a literary critic (anymore). I’m that rarest of animals, a non-professional reader of poetry. In particular, of contemporary innovative poetry, what often gets termed the post-avant, even though absolutely no one seems to like that term.
I’m also a professional editor (lately), who spends most of his weekdays reading—or anyway skimming—books of literary criticism, history, sociology, and whatever other dispatches from the humanities flow through the academic press where I work.
And I’m also, once in a while, in my spare time, a true amateur reader. Of comic books, high literary novels, fortune cookies, blogs, books on Buddhism, and—in that good old, dyed-in-the-wool Derridean sense—all the il n’y a pas d’hors-texte all around us.
A reader reads everyday. So this will be my reading blog. It may be hopelessly eclectic, it may be terminally arcane; but hopefully it will work as a venue to dilate on whatever brushes across my critical faculties, with the “daily reading” motif as backbone and fallback. Hopefully it’ll update frequently, sometimes with as little as a title and some page numbers, sometimes with well thought-out essays, usually with something in between. And, hopefully, it’ll interest some one—at least me.
I’m also a professional editor (lately), who spends most of his weekdays reading—or anyway skimming—books of literary criticism, history, sociology, and whatever other dispatches from the humanities flow through the academic press where I work.
And I’m also, once in a while, in my spare time, a true amateur reader. Of comic books, high literary novels, fortune cookies, blogs, books on Buddhism, and—in that good old, dyed-in-the-wool Derridean sense—all the il n’y a pas d’hors-texte all around us.
A reader reads everyday. So this will be my reading blog. It may be hopelessly eclectic, it may be terminally arcane; but hopefully it will work as a venue to dilate on whatever brushes across my critical faculties, with the “daily reading” motif as backbone and fallback. Hopefully it’ll update frequently, sometimes with as little as a title and some page numbers, sometimes with well thought-out essays, usually with something in between. And, hopefully, it’ll interest some one—at least me.
