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Poetry Cancels Itself to Appease the Mob

Will it be enough?
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Poetry has a published an issue every month in every year since its founding in 1912. It published an issue every month of every year during the First and Second World Wars. It kept on churning out the issues during the Great Depression, and there was no pause during the Cold War or following the September 11th attacks. But it will miss an issue for the first time in its history next month. Why? Because the “manifold violence of our world demands more from us,” which apparently means giving it less. More:

The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine must be agents of antiracism to build a more loving, supportive, and inclusive community.

We cannot escape Poetry’s history, which we have exalted and continue to profit from. We are committed to understanding that history better in order to dismantle its structures and reparate the magazine’s debt to Black people, Indigenous people, other people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, disabled people, and other marginalized groups of people who have been exploited, sidelined, and tokenized in support of white dominant culture. This pause is a necessary part of Poetry magazine’s reckoning with the deep-seated white supremacy of our organization.

We know one missed issue is a small gesture symbolizing our desire to do better. We are taking time to assess, diagnose, and reimagine everything…

What a betrayal of the work of all the previous editors of Poetry who kept the magazine running in difficult times—and a cheap sullying of a legacy. This, of course, follows the resignation of the president and vice president of the Poetry Foundation for not being sufficiently radical in their support of Black Lives Matter and Don Share’s decision to fall on his sword, stepping down as editor “to make space for others” and support the “important changes to come.”

But, trust me, it won’t be enough. Even a promise to never publish a white person again will be seen as too little, too late by the millions of woke, bitter, MFA grads from third-tier universities.

In other news: George RR Martin may be canceled for wearing silly hats.

The man who made antiques cool: “Christopher Gibbs, as much as (perhaps even more so than) any other, was the man who set the sixties swinging. The first to be seen sashaying down Carnaby Street in flares, he was the Beau Brummel of the post-war, post-rationing, post-modern age and he played his part with alacrity, defining and refining the tastes of billionaires, royalty, business heads and rock gods alike. His accomplishments were manifold, and as well as taking enough drugs to emasculate Keith Richards, and influencing aesthetics in a more lasting way than literally anyone else in Britain since the second world war, he is also credited as the man who made antiques cool (long before Lovejoy donned his leather jacket), and who carved out the distressed, boho-aristocratic style which has held sway everywhere that counts ever since.”

John Wilson reviews Catherine Randall’s A Heart Lost in Wonder: The Life and Faith of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

A manuscript scholar investigates the mystery of Thomas Becket’s jeweled psalter: “On Christmas Day 1170, Thomas Becket delivered a sermon to a packed chapter house at Canterbury. His theme was the death of one his predecessors as archbishop, St Alphege, hacked to death by the Danes in the early 11th century – the only martyr in the role so far. ‘There will soon be another,’ Becket declared. Four days later, a quartet of knights arrived drunk, on a perceived mission from the king, and dashed the archbishop’s brains across the cathedral floor. It is easy to see how, knowing his time was up, Becket might identify with Alphege. In The Book in the Cathedral, however, Christopher de Hamel argues that the two had something more tangible in common: an elaborately jewelled psalter – a book of psalms – once owned by Alphege and later treasured by Becket.”

Are bold brushstrokes expressions of a “hyper-masculinity”? Fiona Barber thinks so: “It is when discussing technique that Barber presents a new interpretive approach. She is convinced that brushwork is inherently sexual, with individual paint strokes amounting to ‘signifiers of masculinity’. As evidence she points to the black-on-white gestural abstractions of Franz Kline—de Kooning’s close friend—where a ‘draining of colour focuses attention on the brushstroke; in the context of sexual difference, the exaggerated gesture seems almost hyper-masculine’. Barber contrasts this deliberate brushwork with the techniques of Jackson Pollock (dribbled and poured paint), Clyfford Still (waxy pigment trowelled on with a painting knife) and Mark Rothko (thinned paint applied as vaporous veils of colour). It is implied the artists leaned towards gender fluidity by not using brushes. Female Abstract Expressionists are also swept into this argument. Barber claims sexual role-play underpins how women members of the movement painted, writing that Joan Mitchell’s quite brushy abstractions ‘become legible, I would suggest, as a kind of “drag-act”.’ Once started, there is little stopping efforts to psychologise technique.” Or clothes, for that matter. Barber goes on to argue that T-shirts are inherently masculine. Lounge suits, however, are “bookish,” which is apparently more feminine. I write Prufrock every morning in shorts and a worn-out Hanes while drinking a McCafé and listening to bluegrass. I should probably cancel myself.

Speaking of the psychology of abstract art (you don’t get to use that transition every day), turns out that looking at it can make you dreamy: “Staring into the soothing lines of an image that you can’t quite describe is one of the joys of looking at abstract art. It turns out that it’s also one of the style’s major benefits. New research suggests that abstract art has qualities that can literally change our mindsets, and prompt us to let the minutia of day-to-day life fall away.” 

Clip: Surface of the comet 67P

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