If the classes of all these #elitecolleges and #eliteuniversities can be taught on-line, why do these institutions even need to exist in their present form? Most of the faculty could be converted to as-needed external contractors. Students would not "attend" anywhere but would gather the necessary background however they wished; there would be no "applications," no "acceptance" or "admission" -- these left-overs from the ancien regime -- that's what they are (first, are you our kind of person, do you have a rubber crotch...)

Anyone who has lived in Taipei, for example, has seen them: all the little mormon missionaries, with their white shirts and funny ties. They might as well have CIA spray painted across their white shirts and funny ties. Then there's the Tibetan monks in their crimson robes -- quite different from the robes worn by other Buddhist monks -- more CIA. Then there are the "cultural anthropologists" and the various linguistics people. After a while, you get so you can recognize intel operatives a mile off. Being in a place like that --

In the painting below, one thing I find striking is how dramatic the lighting is, for such an ordinary subject. But this is habitual with this painter, and one of his stylistic signatures. The play of light and shadow on the leaves, combined with their fine sharp delineation, is especially effective. You can almost feel their stiff spikiness. But the light dark play of the sprig to the right is especially striking and, in a sense, dramatic. In addition, unripe blackberries are usually more pink, often with bits of green and white in them. So the

The volume of short pieces called Asylum Poems was prompted by my experience working in a state psychiatric hospital (as an intern in clinical social work). The topic of the hospital and of psychosis itself is used as a metaphor for a range of conditions, situations, realities. Among other things, I was impressed by what interesting people the patients often were. Not always, of course: there is a limit to how "interesting" a paranoid schizophrenic with an IQ of 75 can actually be. But some patients were intelligent, capable, even talented people in

from Asylum Poems

Voices sort through
the self-pile
convening briefly
in late echoes

Eye and hand and
breathing, watching
the eyes that are
for you against you

These always even
your own eyes closed
swarming of voice-eyes
wind-full leaves This hand is infused
with a destined
energy it is I
who am this

Unbelievable the
scar of space-time
left gaping I am
not of this cycle

This context this
world I am not
from around here
life screams me

Fitz Hugh Lane's "The Golden State entering New York Harbor"
In this bright optimistic painting the clouds are especially beautiful and the light that shines around them. They have an almost Constable-like vividness and sense of movement. By contrast, the jade green water is rather stylized and formal. And yet it still conveys a sense of weight and impact. The way it tosses the smaller boats around and the men inside them underlines a motif seen frequently in this painter -- a sense of the smallness of the human presence in the context of nature

Dylan Thomas is currently the most disregarded of the prominent modernist poets. Perhaps it is easy to see why, if one considers that he is an entirely Christian poet, albeit a very heretical one. The aspect of Christianity that he focuses on, almost entirely, is the Incarnation. He pursues this focus with depth, ruthless concreteness and exactitude, and the fiendish energy of the enfant terrible, but he does so with technical brilliance, intellectual depth, and emotional intensity. He never wavered from this focus, this inspiration, though he combines it

Fitz Hugh Lane, "Stage Fort..."

The most underrated poet in American literature: Delmore Schwartz. Read his long meditation on Seurat's La Grande Jatte -- amazing. But also the ignored book-length poem Genesis, his Prelude, sort of. His late religious poems with the overt sound effects (often criticized as excessive) remind me of Patrick Kavanagh's often admired "canal bank" sonnets -- which have similar verbal effects. In both cases the overt sound play seems the indicator of an opening of the troubled and inured self to a divine externality -- Beauty, Grace.

It has just come to my attention that Jorie Graham has blocked me. Oh my! I criticized one of her (rather absurd) political opinions (she seems to have a lot of these) and she must have straight away blocked me. So funny. I disagree with this feature and do not intend to use it. Immediately blocking someone who criticizes your views is an immature response. Indeed it probably indicates the presence of some sort of primitive defense mechanism, such as "splitting." If you do not want to have your views criticized, do not put them out into the public realm.

images.app.goo.gl/2EVBE9Zkzpgpjt… Olson's Maximus Poems as a epic of labor -- fishing, known to be the most dangerous of trades. In which the author honors the heroic efforts of ordinary fishermen (and some extraordinary ones). And for this there was needed a new versification, a new conception regarding