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Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

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adrienne rich poet

Rich Possibilities

January 6, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

In this, my first post of a brand new year, I offer a poem about possibilities. It is by poet Adrienne Rich, who died in 2012 after a hugely successful career as a poet and essayist, feminist and activist. The poem below feels like it was written after a turning point, or significant change, in her life. Indeed, she had many. Here is a great article from The Guardian about the poet. And, here is The Poetry Foundation’s summary of her […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, lit, literature, poetry, reading, writing

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“What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire?”

January 4, 2015 by William Eaton

[print_link] [email_link]   Given that Mike Leigh and Timothy Spall are now offering us such a rich, idiosyncratic portrait of the painter J.M.W. Turner, and given that the movie, for whatever silly reason, takes a detour to make fun of the art critic John Ruskin, I should begin with this: Who cares whether Mr. Ruskin’s views on Turner are sound or not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: dialogue, History, J.M.W. Turner, John Ruskin, literature, Mike Leigh, movies, Oscar Wilde

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books

No One Wants Jane Austen

December 30, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

Every time I come across a remarkable literary journal, I get surprised. Another one? There are already so many good ones, it seems. Could the rumor that no one reads poetry anymore be just that, a rumor? Let’s hope so. In the meantime, I leave you with a poem by Joanna Schroeder, which appeared in issue #60 of the remarkable “Pudding Magazine.”   Splitting Up the Books When the marriage is over, no one wants Jane Austen. Happy endings taped […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, lit, literature, poetry, reading, writing

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"Venus and Mars" by Sandro Botticelli

Mars and Venus and Prose

December 23, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

Prose poetry is in style these days. It’s true. The cutting-edge journals are publishing it, the traditional journals are publishing it, and even the boring ones are publishing it. So, it’s no wonder that a good many poets are writing it. But, not every poet is doing it well. In fact, I rarely come across a prose poem I like. The lack of form seems lazy and bulky to me, and I miss the premeditation implied by well-placed line breaks. […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: art, books, lit, literature, poetry, reading, writing

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Augie March’s Christmas

December 19, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link]   For an unsentimental take on Christmas, and a view of not-so-loving, cat-and-mouse relationships between adults and children, I went back to Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March. In this scene the young Augie is in the Chicago department store where he has been hired as one of Santa’s helpers for the Christmas season: Painted and rouged with theater greasepaint and dusted with mica snow, Jimmy and I marched around the store with tambourines and curl-tongued noisemakers, turning […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, children, literature, reading

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Poetry

Proverbial Snow

December 16, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

No one like William Carlos Williams to capture the simple transcendence of snowfall. His poem “Blizzard,” below, beautifully captures the private feeling of loneliness that heavy snow can instill. It seemed like a fitting piece to share now that much of the country is immersed in the thick of winter. Blizzard Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down — the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, lit, literature, poetry, reading, writing

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The Ice Age, a chronicle of the recession last time.

December 12, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link] With market analysts predicting that another London real estate bubble is about to burst, I turned to Margaret Drabble’s The Ice Age for a sardonic representation of the 1970s property crash in the UK and the people responsible for it. Drabble is excellent in her depiction of Anthony Keating, a Liberal Arts graduate who has turned his back on the traditional left-liberal culture of his milieu in order to go in for the new, exciting world of real estate, […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, literature, politics

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The Dreyfus Affair in a great political thriller

December 5, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link]   One hundred and twenty years ago, in December 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was found guilty of selling French military secrets to the Germans. He was sentenced to life in exile on Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guiana. Politicians and journalists used the fact that Dreyfus was a Jew to whip up a massive wave of anti-Semitic feeling among the population. Nevertheless, a campaign to prove Dreyfus’s innocence was organized by his brother Mathieu and the journalist Bernard […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: French, literature, politics

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De Profundis — Wilde’s cry from the depths of prison

November 28, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link] In May 1895, at the height of his literary career, the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde was arrested and charged with ‘acts of gross indecency with other male persons’. Convicted at the Old Bailey, he became a bankrupt outcast overnight, and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labor. Before he was released from Reading prison, Wilde wrote a long letter to his former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, which was later published as De Profundis. In it, […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: homosexuality, literature, love, poetry, politics

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