Tag: research

Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto II

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This entry is part 4 of 59 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

For those who don’t know, I’m writing a series of posts about Ezra Pound’s massive book-length poem The Cantos as I work my way through the poems. My readings, designed to help me write a novel featuring Pound as an occult adventurer (more on that here), will stray from the merely academic to the unusual and highly fanciful, so take all this with a grain of salt! If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, there will be a menu where you can go back to the beginning of this series. Today, I’m continuing with the Cantos, and specifically addressing Canto …

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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto I

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This entry is part 2 of 59 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

For those who don’t know, I’m writing a series of posts about Ezra Pound’s massive book-length poem The Cantos as I work my way through the poems. My readings, designed to help me write a novel featuring Pound as an occult adventurer (more on that here), will stray from the merely academic to the unusual and highly fanciful, so take all this with a grain of salt! If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, there will be a menu where you can go back to the beginning of this series. Where to begin? I could go back and read Personae …

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Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff

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Ben Ratliff — a jazz critic for The New York Times, among other things — is like Trane in that he comes straight out with what he’s up to, though it might not be right away that you realize it. The title Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, if you look at it carefully, tells you what this book is really about, and it’s not just John Coltrane — it’s the story of the sound (or rather, the sounds) that burst into one’s mind when Trane’s name is mentioned: how Coltrane developed that sound from the beginning, how it evolved …

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John Coltrane and the Pulp Connection

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Arguably one of the most significant musicians in American history (and unarguably one of the most significant saxophonists and jazz musicians ever), John Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina. It might be a weird thing to bring up —  where he grew up, that is — except that, when we think about major artists, we so often imagine them having sprung into being fully-formed, if not in technique or approach, then at least in their essential selfhood. This is also often how we tell their stories: for example, in Coltrane: Story of a Sound (a book I’ve just …

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Links of Interest

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I’m about to go judge a public speaking contest, but I wanted to note these links: World War II London Blitz Diary 1939-1945: someone is posting Great-Grandmother Ruby Thompson’s diary from during the Blitz in London. Very cool reading, interesting and, you know, detailed in ways that are worthy of note to people researching the time. (I found the link helping a student find resources for WWII London life, for a story she’s writing.) This post on the Women’s History Network Blog has a neat discussion of “Career Novels in the 1950s” — a kind of juvenile-oriented novel for girls …

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Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever by Salim Washington anmd Farah Jasmine Griffin

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Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever by Salim Washington anmd Farah Jasmine Griffin. The University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, 1998.) The collaboration between Miles Davis and John Coltrane is an interesting topic, and it’s especially interesting that it’s framed as such right from the title of this book. Coltrane, after all, started out as a “junior” to Davis, if not in age then certainly in credentials and in the establishment of a personal, individual style. It’d be difficult to argue otherwise, but Griffin and Washington acknowledge this. However, they …

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Library Access?

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UPDATE: Got ’em. Thanks to the several people (Claire, Tinatsu) who emailed them to me while I wasn’t looking! ORIGINAL POST: If anyone out there has access to either or both of these articles, I’d be very grateful for a copy. (My own employer’s library being, still, unequipped with any serious research access for Anglophones.) Drevdahl, John E.,  and Raymond B. Cattell. “Personality and creativity in artists and writers.” Journal of Clinical Psychology. Volume 14, Issue 2, pages 107–111, April 1958. (LINK.) Kaun, David E. “Writers die young: The impact of work and leisure on longevity.” Journal of Economic Psychology Volume 12, Issue 2, …

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What’s Your Class’s Constitution?

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I have something neat going on in one of my classes, and I wanted to post about it. One of the papers I wrote this summer was about the critique I believe is implicit in a couple of the creative projects I worked on with students in 2008-2009 — a comic book about the Goose Dad phenomenon, and a faux-documentary critiquing the cultishness of English education (and of the TEFL industry) in Korea. My argument is that while the narratives my students created was explicitly a discussion of the effect of TEFL on Korean society, it also contained a parallel, …

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Article Help?

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UPDATE (20 minutes later): I got the articles. The second one is, indeed, online here. That was quick. Thanks KSM! ORIGINAL POST: Anyone have a copy of this article kicking around? Ahem, I mean, you know, I could use a copy for my research, but my employer won’t have JSTOR access till 2011. Ooh, and this one? Yes, it’s just background for a story, at most likely to turn into a vaguely passing detail here and there, though I suspect the former article may factor into a discussion of Ian McDonald’s River of Gods/Cyberabad Days too. (McDonald is a citizen …

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Thailand: A Short History (2nd Edition) by David K. Wyatt

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History is not just a procession of Great Men, kings and generals and high priests. We all know this, we insist upon it. Yet it is difficult to tell the story of history without discussing these figures, not only because we know so much more about them than we do about the commoners for so much of history, but also because of the degree to which their decisions, agendas, and problems influenced, shaped, and determined the lives of those around them. When we want to know something of a particular historical period, history becomes a Shakespearean play, complete with clowns, …

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