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Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

THE LITTLE TIN BELL
OF MY NAME


Bugger me. When in the course of twenty-four hours Saul Bellow dies and Ted Kooser gets the Pulitzer, something’s amiss. (Among the throng of recent dead, UD is also going to miss Prince Rainier [UD chose this news source for her link because it pronounces the French names for you] of Monaco, who reigner’d o’er the hapless Grimaldi family at the heart of UD’s long furtive addiction to Paris Match -- but never mind.)

No, UD is not awfully conversant with the work of not only our most recent Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry but also it turns out (who knew?) our Poet Laureate. But believe her when she tells you that last night, after reading quite a number of Kooser’s kitschy metaphorrein sketches of ordinary folks and farm critters, UD had to race to her poetry shelf and down a liter of Merrill. Here comes a Kooser:

A BIRTHDAY POEM

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

Christ, if you want this stuff, read Robert Frost. .. UD’s never been a nature girl (Kooser plants most of his poetry seeds in Iowa… no, Nebraska…) but she can be made to appreciate the heartland by a first-rate poet… Even the title of Kooser’s recent collection - "Delights & Shadows" - is inept…. At least A.R. Ammons brought a brain to the back forty… Grumble, grumble…