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Siena polled 238 historians and compiled a list of best to worst Presidents in history, based on a pretty wide range of criteria. To no one's surprise, George W. Bush is low on the list--fifth from the bottom, as a matter of fact, ahead of only Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, James Buchanan and Andrew … Continue reading The Need for Distance

So this has been in the works for the better part of a month now, but it's really come together in the last couple of days. The Rumpus is going to do a poetry version of its book club. I believe it was Matthew Zapruder's idea, but four of us will be sharing the responsibility: … Continue reading Announcing The Rumpus Poetry Book Club

Perhaps I will have more to say later on. I'm a bit indisposed right now.

Don Share tweeted this excerpt from a longer piece about Andrew Wylie: "We spend 96 percent of our time talking about 4 percent of the business." Wylie is talking about the current share of the market held by e-books. But it's the statement which followed which interested me more. “That 4 percent will climb slowly, … Continue reading Physical Book as Fetish Object

I can't honestly say I've been boycotting BP stations since Deepwater Horizon first blew up, because I didn't often fill up there. There is a station close to where I live, but it's a pain to get in and out of, situated as it is on a very busy corner and with not much room … Continue reading On Boycotting BP filling stations

I didn't do one of these last week, and I haven't blogged much lately either. End of the semester always does that, even if it's a summer semester. Hopefully I'll get back to blogging now. So, as Stephen mentioned in a recent Daily Rumpus, we'll be doing a poetry version of the Rumpus Book Club. … Continue reading Poetic Lives Online

In the past, when I wrote about Stanley Fish over at Incertus, it was to blast him, usually over his (to my mind) ridiculous statements about atheism, and occasionally about his ideas on politics in the classroom. But here, he's making sense when he talks about the problems with the consumer view of higher education … Continue reading The cost of education, and a bit on student evaluations

One of the tabs currently open in my web browser is a Google map of the quickest driving route from Waveland, Mississippi to Missoula, Montana. Sometime on Monday, my daughter and her best friend will begin their great adventure, driving interstate highways and US routes and toll roads and who knows what else on their … Continue reading Adventure

I've mentioned Poets for Living Waters before, a number of times. It's a poetic response/action to the current and ongoing ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. They've run a couple of my poems written in response to the disaster, and I feel honored to be not only a part of the project, but to … Continue reading New Poems

I apparently missed this tweetmeme the first time it came around, but when I saw it yesterday, I knew I'd wind up writing about it, just because books have always, it seems, been an important part of my life. Important really undersells the effect--they've been integral to my life. I used to walk into walls … Continue reading #booksthatchangedmyworld