Category: REVIEWS

Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXIII

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This entry is part 49 of 60 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, one (or a few) at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. I’m not sure whether the fiction project that inspired this series will ever come to fruition, but I’d like to try finish the Cantos just the same. There’s also an (updated) index of all the Cantos (and related sources) I’ve discussed so far. In this installment, I try to figure out what we can say about Canto LXIII, the second of the …

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Travel Writing, Real and Otherwise: The Blazing World and La Russie en 1839

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A couple of passages from books I’ve read recently, and then some thoughts on each. The Lady now finding her self in so strange a place, and amongst such wonderful kind of Creatures, was extreamly strucken with fear, and could entertain no other Thoughts, but that every moment her life was to be a sacrifice to their cruelty; but those Bear-like Creatures, how terrible soever they appear’d to her sight, yet were they so far from exercising any cruelty upon her, that rather they shewed her all civility and kindness imaginable; for she being not able to go upon the …

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Tales of Malawi, 1950-1975

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Last year, my wife conspired with my sister Marie to acquire for me a reprint of a book my sister had printed up chronicling some of the stories my dad had told Marie and her husband Troy as they’d prepared for a trip to Malawi and South Africa many years ago. It took some work for my sister to pull off the reprint, since she’d self-published the book using some program on an old (and now defunct) Mac… but somehow she managed it, and I received a copy for Christmas, a labour for which I am deeply grateful. The book, …

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Mary Ambree and Female Warriors

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Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of writers of fantasy talk about historical female warriors—the historicity of women marching into battle alongside men—and there’s obviously value in looking at history, because there are plenty of dumbasses out there who will be quick to say something stupid like, “But women didn’t march into battle! That’s dumb!” There will be nitwits who will say it’s feminist claptrap, or unbelievable, or implausible, or whatever. (I mean, I suppose we should spend time correcting such ignorance and stupidity when we encounter it, at least occasionally, right? So: yes, it is plausible. There definitely were societies where women …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 48 of 60 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, one (or a few) at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. I’m not sure whether the fiction project that inspired this series will ever come to fruition, but I’d like to try finish the Cantos just the same. There’s also an index of all the Cantos (and related sources) I’ve discussed so far. In this installment, I dig into Canto LXII, the first of the ten Adams Cantos, while touching on Merrymount and …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXI

gordsellar4 Comments
This entry is part 46 of 60 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. Also, since the table of contents that my post series plugin creates has gotten far too unwieldy to include at the top of each post, I’ve gone ahead and made an index of the Cantos I’ve discussed, with links to each post. I’ll try remember to update it as I continue with this project. That index is here. The index is new, so I …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LX

gordsellar0 Comments
This entry is part 45 of 60 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. Also, since the table of contents that my post series plugin creates has gotten far too unwieldy to include at the top of each post, I’ve gone ahead and made an index of the Cantos I’ve discussed, with links to each post. I’ll try remember to update it as I continue with this project. That index is here. The index is new, so I …

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Bruno Overload

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This post deals with some recent readings I’ve done on the subject of Giordano Bruno. It’s divided into three parts: Recent Readings covers the books I read, and my reaction to them, with a special emphasis on the system of artificial memory (that is, how Bruno modified the classical art of memory/memory palace system) that was one of Bruno’s biggest claims to fame in his own time. Side Note: The Temples? plays Six Degrees of Separation between Bruno and Jonathan Swift. I’ve narrowed it down to five degrees, too, which surprised me, but maybe it shouldn’t: Europe from 1580 to 1680 was a pretty small world, and …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LIX

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This entry is part 44 of 60 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

This post is one in a series of readings I’m posting of each poem in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, a few at a time. The readings are atypical, for reasons made clear in my first post in this series. Also, since the table of contents that my post series plugin creates has gotten far too unwieldy to include at the top of each post, I’ve gone ahead and made an index of the Cantos I’ve discussed, with links to each post. I’ll try remember to update it as I continue with this project. That index is here. The index is new, so I …

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Hothouse (1962), by Brian Aldiss

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So, what in the world is going on in Brian Aldiss’ Hugo Award-winning 1962 stories that eventually got collected as Hothouse? Note that I wrote in, not with. I just finished the book the other day, though it took me ages to get through it and that’s given me a lot of time to ruminate on the parts I’d already read. The book is strange, in ways that I found both fascinating and frustrating. (But, honestly, the reason it took so long has more to do with my son’s newly developed Spider Man-like climbing abilities than the book itself.)

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