Poetry<\/h3>\n
Apart from the poetry I’ve been reading for my dissertation research (WC Williams and Zukofsky this month, mostly), I didn’t read as much poetry for pleasure, as I would have liked, but I did read some. Here’s what I read:<\/p>\n
- \n
- August Kleinzahler’s\u00a0Hotel Oneira<\/a>. <\/em>I appreciate Kleinzahler as a human being, as a critic, and as a poet. This book was dizzying.\u00a0Here’s a review of the book in\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>.<\/a><\/li>\n
- My friend Ron Czerwien published his first chapbook, a collection of political poems,\u00a0A Ragged Tear Down the Middle of Our Flag<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>with Locofo Chaps. Favorite lines: “There is no amulet to protect you \/ from dissatisfaction, no persuading the posturing toad \/ that it is a toad and not a tremendous winner, \/ corpulent”\u00a0You can buy a copy for $5 here.<\/a>\u00a0I also read two other small chapbooks in the Locofo series: Gabe Gudding’s\u00a0Bed From Government<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and Andrea Sloan Pink’s\u00a0Prison and Other Ideas<\/a><\/em>.<\/li>\n
- I went to Denver for work and visited Tim Roberts and Julie Carr’s bookstore\/performance space Counterpath<\/a>\u00a0while I was there. Inspired by the visit, I’ve been digging into several of the books they’ve published<\/a>: so far, I’ve read Jesse Weise’s edited collection\u00a0Locked Out: Voices from America’s Second Prison<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(narratives about the difficulty of reconstructing one’s life after incarceration); CA Conrad’s\u00a0Circle M<\/em><\/a>; Ron Silliman’s\u00a0Against Conceptual Poetry<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(the transcript of a conversation between Julian Assange, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and other media titans. See Vanessa Place’s review<\/a>\u00a0for more on the book); and Robert Fitterman’s\u00a0Holocaust Museum<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(a collection and presentation of descriptive labels and metadata from objects collected in the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Longform Journalism<\/h3>\n
Another month dabbling more than I wanted in\u00a0longform journalism (my version of a guilty pleasure, I guess?). Here’s the best of what I read in April:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Brendan Borrell’s article in The Guardian<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on ethical controversies in the English mole-catching community. Probably my favorite thing I read all month.<\/li>\n
- An adapted excerpt<\/a>\u00a0in The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0from Michael Finkel’s new book,\u00a0The Stranger in the Woods<\/em>, about the recently captured longtime Maine hermit-thief Christopher Knight.<\/li>\n
- Janet Somers’ excellent article in <\/a>The Atlantic\u00a0<\/em>about the promise, disappointment, and aftermath of the failed Google Books project and its many legal obstacles.<\/li>\n
- Dale Maharidge and Jessica Bruder’s account, in Harper’s<\/em>,\u00a0<\/a>of their receipt and storage of the material leaked to Laura Poitras by Edward Snowden.<\/li>\n
- Ben Mauk’s essay “The Useful Village<\/a>,” published in VQR<\/em>, about Sumte, a small German town of ~100 people recently designated as a sanctuary for roughly 800 refugees.<\/li>\n
- Matea Gold’s investigative piece in the Washington Post<\/a> exploring the financial influence of secretive conservative mega-donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer (father and daughter), and their connections to Stephen Bannon.<\/li>\n
- Stacy Cowley’s concise, damning explanation in the NYT’s Deal Book<\/a>\u00a0of the several charges made in lawsuits filed against Navient, the nation’s largest servicer of student loans.<\/li>\n
- David Halperin’s long Huff Post exploration<\/a>\u00a0of the recent deal Purdue University has struck, under Mitch Daniels’ leadership, to buy the for-profit educational institution Kaplan University.<\/li>\n
- Bryan Alexander’s helpful summary<\/a> of several distressing recent trends in student debt in the United States.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Featured image: Dead moles struck along a fence in Yorkshire, England. Photograph by desirwin<\/a>
![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-inject\/images\/cc.png?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Books My leisure reading of books slowed down a bit in April, as I continued getting sucked into lots more longform than I had intended and, on a happier note, did a lot more reading for my dissertation (good news!!!). Here’s some of what I read last month for pleasure. Nonfiction I spent much of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"I've got a new blog post up, detailing the best of what I read last month. Enjoy!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[16,17,6,18],"class_list":["post-6188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reading","tag-books","tag-literature","tag-poetry","tag-reading"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2464682583_75238b8f03_b_moles-yorkshire.jpg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1","author_info":{"display_name":"Steel Wagstaff","author_link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/author\/steel\/"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2464682583_75238b8f03_b_moles-yorkshire.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2464682583_75238b8f03_b_moles-yorkshire.jpg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd6z5D-1BO","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6310,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/2017-my-year-in-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":6188,"position":0},"title":"2017: My Year in Reading","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"January 3, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the first year that I've really made an effort to keep track of my leisure reading. One of my goals for the year was to read less internet-based news and more books, and I think I was more or less successful, though some months were better for reading\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/8703997248_274eea3496_k-e1515010915522.jpg?fit=1196%2C735&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/8703997248_274eea3496_k-e1515010915522.jpg?fit=1196%2C735&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/8703997248_274eea3496_k-e1515010915522.jpg?fit=1196%2C735&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/8703997248_274eea3496_k-e1515010915522.jpg?fit=1196%2C735&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/8703997248_274eea3496_k-e1515010915522.jpg?fit=1196%2C735&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6078,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/my-november-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":6188,"position":1},"title":"My November 2016 Reading","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"December 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Books My reading pace slowed a bit in November (the US elections and their sad aftermath have provided me with lots of avenues for distraction and worry), but I still managed to keep up my love affair with books, though I picked a fair amount of duds this month. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "What I'm Reading"","block_context":{"text":"What I'm Reading","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/reading\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Books","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/liwf2uhxs0q-annie-spratt.jpg?fit=1200%2C704&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/liwf2uhxs0q-annie-spratt.jpg?fit=1200%2C704&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/liwf2uhxs0q-annie-spratt.jpg?fit=1200%2C704&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/liwf2uhxs0q-annie-spratt.jpg?fit=1200%2C704&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/liwf2uhxs0q-annie-spratt.jpg?fit=1200%2C704&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4979,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/my-october-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":6188,"position":2},"title":"My October 2016 Reading","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"November 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Books I wrote last month that I was on a big reading kick, and that surge of devouring books has continued in full force this month. Outside of the reading I've been doing for my dissertation and my work, here's a list of the books I read for pleasure\/self-education in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "What I'm Reading"","block_context":{"text":"What I'm Reading","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/reading\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"People reading the newspaper on a bench in the street after the American moon landing July 21, 1969","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/tumblr_mx1olyYcw11sfie3io1_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C774&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/tumblr_mx1olyYcw11sfie3io1_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C774&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/tumblr_mx1olyYcw11sfie3io1_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C774&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/tumblr_mx1olyYcw11sfie3io1_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C774&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/tumblr_mx1olyYcw11sfie3io1_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C774&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6177,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/my-march-2017-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":6188,"position":3},"title":"My March 2017 Reading","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"April 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Books If March had a theme for me, I suppose it would have been 'Occupy'? I may be several years late to the movement, but most of what I read this month seemed to have been written by someone involved in the Occupy protests and movements of the past half-dozen\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "What I'm Reading"","block_context":{"text":"What I'm Reading","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/reading\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The People's Library","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/6253846737_e626eed66f_b.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/6253846737_e626eed66f_b.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/6253846737_e626eed66f_b.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/6253846737_e626eed66f_b.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6198,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/my-june-2017-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":6188,"position":4},"title":"My June 2017 Reading","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"July 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Books The good news? I read a lot for my dissertation in June 2017. Even better news? Much of it was pleasurable (at least for me)--a lot of \"Objectivist\" poetry, biographical material on Williams and Zukofsky, and histories of late 1920s-early 1930s little magazines. 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I slowed down considerably from my October\/November frenzy, and spent a lot more of my free time reading and writing on dissertation related topics (hi, Objectivist poets!) but still managed to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "What I'm Reading"","block_context":{"text":"What I'm Reading","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/reading\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6192,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6188\/revisions\/6192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- An adapted excerpt<\/a>\u00a0in The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0from Michael Finkel’s new book,\u00a0The Stranger in the Woods<\/em>, about the recently captured longtime Maine hermit-thief Christopher Knight.<\/li>\n
- My friend Ron Czerwien published his first chapbook, a collection of political poems,\u00a0A Ragged Tear Down the Middle of Our Flag<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>with Locofo Chaps. Favorite lines: “There is no amulet to protect you \/ from dissatisfaction, no persuading the posturing toad \/ that it is a toad and not a tremendous winner, \/ corpulent”\u00a0You can buy a copy for $5 here.<\/a>\u00a0I also read two other small chapbooks in the Locofo series: Gabe Gudding’s\u00a0Bed From Government<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and Andrea Sloan Pink’s\u00a0Prison and Other Ideas<\/a><\/em>.<\/li>\n