Second Thoughts

The Poetry Archive is an organization in the UK that has commissioned the recording of many contemporary poets reading their own poetry, and you can listen to many, many samples. Also collected are some historic readings which they have gathered in one place. Poems comes alive in the poet’s mouth. As the website tour notes--and it is a great place to begin exploring--”the pleasures and meanings of poetry depend as much on sound-sense as they do on page-sense.” If a poem is inaccessible via the written page, perhaps it is because the first poets--Homer, for example--depended on oral storytelling for the poem’s power.

Today’s Papers has become my favorite morning reading. A Slate Magazine writer--who presumably wakes up at 4 in the morning--gathers the lead stories of major newspapers and uses their similarities and differences to put together an intelligent, and usually witty, column. It’s a great way not only to get a sense of what’s happening in the world, but to see a larger picture which you can’t get by looking in just one place.

Literally, A Weblog is a blog which keeps track of misuses of the word "literally." Now I’m all nervous. In the same way that I’ve been unable to use the word “ironic” correctly after reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I imagine Dave Eggers shaking his head.