Patrick Kanouse's Blog, page 61

iMovie Experiment: The Idea of Perfection in the Found Order of a Landscape

I have recently discovered iMovie on my Mac and wanted to try some experimenting with the program. So I took some photos my wife took while we were in the Turks and Caicos in February and coupled them with a poem that I wrote based on that bit of wonderful beach.

I'm very curious what people think of this. Cheesy? Stupid? Awesome? Huh? So whatever feedback you care to offer, I'm listening...

Roger Scruton's "Beauty"

I have recently finished Roger Scruton's Beauty , which I had been reading slowly over a period of time and have referenced previously in this blog. This is a generally conservative approach to "beauty," but conservative in that sense of "is change necessary or is this change for the sake of change?" Or as Scruton puts it: "the relentless pursuit of artistic innovation leads to a cult of nihilism."

Scruton is clearly on the side of Edward Hopper over Mark Rothko. I very much enjoy both, but an ...

Tipton Poetry Journal

So in the two most recent issues of the Tipton Poetry Journal , I have had a couple of poems published. Order your copies and support a small journal.

Awesome's Birthday

Happy Birthday my love!

10 Things I Love About My Wife (in no particular order):

She's immensely creative (just look at her knitting patterns).She's fantastically talented (just look at her knitting work).She loves, loves, loves music.The way sunlight lands on her hair. Takes my breath away because the image is so arresting. Those are cinema moments, I tell you.She found commercials of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica series interesting (before she knew they were BSG commercials).Her superior...

Glee: A Consideration as to Why It Is So Good

Why is Glee, that Fox series on Tuesday nights, so very good? Many reasons could be cited: Its rapier humor. Its crisp dialogue. Its superb acting. Its shockingly good singing. Etc. And all of these contribute, but I think something more basic drives the response to the show. The show enacts the emotions of the songs performed. It takes the anger or joy or what have you and throws them before you, using the songs as hooks into the day-to-day life of the characters. In some ways, it puts on-sc...

A Reason for Poetry

The other night, I was crusing around the Internet a bit...Facebook, news, etc. For some time, I've consider the rancor, the anger, the bile surrounding much of politics and political speech to be corrosive and hateful. I am a firm believer in respecting the right of free expression, but I do not believe I must, in the end, respect the opinion.

Anyways, I perhaps too much place an emphasis on alleviating unnecessary or preventable suffering. Some of the more stirring and radical concepts in th...

Shameless Plug Again

Recently, my little PDF book Portrait of a Woman Brushing Her Hair and Other Poems (available from my website for free) received a very positive review from a reader on Goodreads.com. In a shameless bit of self-publicity, I share it here. I appreciate Asmah's taking the time to write such a generous review as well as letting me share it on my blog.

"Portrait of a Woman Brushing Her Hair and Other Poems" takes place in the eastern Mediterranean, and its environment engages the poet's five...

Obscurity and William Shakespeare

Obscurity is an oft discussed topic in poetry, and a topic I will revisit again here soon. However,  as a teaser, I offer this. As I was reading Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part III, I came across this in Act II, Scene 6. It is spoken by Richard, the Duke of York's son (and soon to be villain in Richard III).

Revoke that doom of mercy, for 'tis Clifford,
Who not contented that he lopp'd the branch
In hewing Rutland, when his leaves put forth,
But set his murth'ring knife unto the root,
From whence...

Vivian Maier: A Blog of Photos

Jared Carter sent me this link to a blog featuring Vivian Maier's photos. Amazing work by a photographer you probably have never heard of...

The Transience of the Aesthetic

I have been reading Charles Rosen's "Radical, Modern Hofmannsthal" from the April 8, 2010 issue of The New York Review of Books . Hugo von Hofmannsthal was a Austrian poet who wrote, apparently, brilliant poems (I have not yet read any myself) from 1890-98 (when he was 16-24) before ceasing writing poetry (he also wrote the librettos for several Richard Strauss operas. Much of the article discusses why Hofmannsthal quit writing poetry. Apparently, Hofmannsthal gave an answer in a fictional let...