#eliot a. cohen
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
Much of the public discussion of Ukraine reveals a tendency to patronize that country and others that escaped Russian rule. As Toomas Ilves, a former president of Estonia, acidly observed, âWhen I was at university in the mid-1970s, no one referred to Germany as âthe former Third Reich.â And yet today, more than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we keep on being referred to as âformer Soviet bloc countries.ââ Tropes about Ukrainian corruption abound, not without reasonâbut one may also legitimately ask why so many members of Congress enter the House or Senate with modest means and leave as multimillionaires, or why the children of U.S. presidents make fortunes off foreign countries, or, for that matter, why building in New York City is so infernally expensive.
The latest, richest example of Western condescension came in a report by German military intelligence that complains that although the Ukrainians are good students in their training courses, they are not following Western doctrine and, worse, are promoting officers on the basis of combat experience rather than theoretical knowledge. Similar, if less cutting, views have leaked out of the Pentagon.
Criticism by the German military of any countryâs combat performance may be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the Bundeswehr has not seen serious combat in nearly eight decades. In Afghanistan, Germany was notorious for having considerably fewer than 10 percent of its thousands of in-country troops outside the wire of its forward operating bases at any time. One might further observe that when, long ago, the German army did fight wars, it, too, tended to promote experienced and successful combat leaders, as wartime armies usually do.
American complaints about the pace of Ukraineâs counteroffensive and its failure to achieve rapid breakthroughs are similarly misplaced. The Ukrainians indeed received a diverse array of tanks and armored vehicles, but they have far less mine-clearing equipment than they need. They tried doing it our wayâattempting to pierce dense Russian defenses and break out into open territoryâand paid a price. After 10 days they decided to take a different approach, more careful and incremental, and better suited to their own capabilities (particularly their precision long-range weapons) and the challenge they faced. That is, by historical standards, fast adaptation. By contrast, the United States Army took a good four years to develop an operational approach to counterinsurgency in Iraq that yielded success in defeating the remnants of the Baathist regime and al-Qaeda-oriented terrorists.
A besetting sin of big militaries, particularly Americaâs, is to think that their way is either the best way or the only way. As a result of this assumption, the United States builds inferior, mirror-image militaries in smaller allies facing insurgency or external threat. These forces tend to fail because they are unsuited to their environment or simply lack the resources that the U.S. military possesses in plenty. The Vietnamese and, later, the Afghan armies are good examples of this tendencyâand Washingtonâs postwar bad-mouthing of its slaughtered clients, rather than critical self-examination of what it set them up for, is reprehensible.
The Ukrainians are now fighting a slow, patient war in which they are dismantling Russian artillery, ammunition depots, and command posts without weapons such as American ATACMS and German Taurus missiles that would make this sensible approach faster and more effective. They know far more about fighting Russians than anyone in any Western military knows, and they are experiencing a combat environment that no Western military has encountered since World War II. Modesty, never an American strong suit, is in order.
 â  Western Diplomats Need to Stop Whining About Ukraine
#eliot a. cohen#current events#politics#ukrainian politics#american politics#warfare#strategy#tactics#diplomacy#russo-ukrainian war#2022 russian invasion of ukraine#war in afghanistan#vietnam war#ukraine#usa#toomas hendrik ilves
514 notes
·
View notes
Text
Just as Andrei Sakharov was the most prominent late twentieth century exponent of the Westernizer school of Russian political and social thought, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was the best manifestation of the Slavophile school. This rehashing by Eliot A Cohen of Solzhenitsyn's Harvard commencement address from 1978 is the day's essential read. While clearing out a storage room filled with books, I came across a slim volume, A World Split Apart, the text of Aleksandr Solzhenitsynâs 1978 Harvard commencement address. I remember listening to the speech at the time and being disconcerted by the petulant commentary it elicited. Solzhenitsyn had been in the United States only three years, having been expelled by the Soviet government and living as a recluse in Vermont. The consensusâcertainly among the great and the good of Cambridge, Massachusettsâwas that he was an ultranationalist, a reactionary, and, above all, an ingrate. At the time, I thought the reaction peevish and beside the point. Rereading the speech, it seems even more urgent that we pay heed to his excoriating critique of Western liberalism.
Solzhenitsyn did misunderstand some of the key elements of Western, and specifically American, liberal democracy. He was no democrat, although he unreservedly opposed cruel and arbitrary government. It is true, too, that his deep religious faith and mystical belief in Russiaâs destiny were and remain alien to most non-Russians. And it is true, as well, that he had cordial if cautious relations in the early 2000s with Vladimir Putin, although he was staunchly in favor of letting the Soviet Unionâs subject nations, including even Ukraine, go their own way. But what matters now as it did then is his critique of us. We have just seen a feckless House of Representatives pass a ludicrous impeachment of a Cabinet secretary by one voteâand then skip town while avoiding a vote on aid to Ukraine. We have seen the Westâs inability to prevent the murder, by direct or indirect means, of a heroic dissident, Alexei Navalny, and the gleeful insouciance of the Russian dictator hours after it was reported. We have seen a foreign war used as an excuse to hound Jews on campuses and in the streets, and we have the horrifying spectacle of a possible return to the presidency of one of the most corrupt and dangerous politicians in American history. Which makes it worthwhile to return to Solzhenitsynâs speech, a dark reflection for a different dark time.
The speech begins with a slap to our face: âA decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.â That is as true now as it was then, possibly truer. At home, a great political party collapses in craven subservience to a demagogue. Abroad, we fear to arm Ukraine adequately to defeat a monstrous aggressor; we fear to punish an Iranian regime that has repeatedly sought to kill our people and occasionally succeeds; we fear to face the fact that all of us in the liberal-democratic world are spending way less than what we need to defend ourselves. Domestically, we fear to dissent from the orthodoxies of our respective subcultures. Nowhere is this more true than among those who should prize intellectual courage, as Solzhenitsyn did. âYour scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.â When the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression consistently rates Americaâs oldest and most prestigious university one of the very worst for freedom of speech, something is deeply amiss. And that is, of course, Harvard, the very university at which Solzhenitsyn spoke, whose motto is VeritasââTruth.â
One is hard-pressed today to name more than a handful of truly courageous professors, deans, and university presidents willing to jeopardize their careers and their social standing by taking unpopular standsâunyielding opposition to DEI rules and bureaucracies, for example. The very notions that reasonable people can disagree on important matters, that oneâs point of view reflects individual thought rather than identity or tribe, and that physical intimidation has no place in civilized politics are all at risk. Solzhenitsyn talked about intellectuals because, as a Russian of that ilk, he believed that writers were the conscience of their countries. For politicians he had little use, but surely courage is sorely lacking there as well. When Donald Trump sneered at John McCain, a heroic figure if ever there was one, who had suffered terribly for his country and loved it unreservedly, Trump paid no political price. Which means that the problem was not so much Trump as it is us. It has been a very long time since a rising young American politician, badly injured in his own war service, published Profiles in Courage and was acclaimed for it.
At the root of the Westâs troubles, Solzhenitsyn believed, was the view that man is the measure of all things, that social problems of all kinds can be managed away, that evil is not embedded in human nature, and that the ultimate purpose of life is happiness. In large measure, we in the West still believe these things. Above all we talk endlessly about happiness, as measured by psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists. To which Solzhenitsyn observed, if âman were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die.â And as he pointed out, if such a credo holds, âfor the sake of what should one risk oneâs precious life in defense of the common good?â Which may explain the struggles of many armies, including the American, to fill their ranks.
By Eliot A. Cohen
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
By: Eliot A. Cohen
Published: Dec 23, 2023
Like many alumni of Harvard, I have been following the misadventures of President Claudine Gayâfirst her coolly calibrated reflections on arguments for the genocide of Jews, and now accusations about the intellectual integrity of her published workâwith appalled fascination. It is the latter topic on which I can claim some expertise.
I learned about plagiarism at Harvard by an accident of academic politics. The department of government, where I had received my Ph.D., had an opening for an assistant professor in the field of international affairs, and it had (in the departmentâs opinion) two equally attractive candidates. With Solomonic wisdom, they divided the position in half, offering me and my competitor half-time administrative positions. Mine was as the Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Quincy House.
The Harvard houses are modified versions of Oxford or Cambridge colleges. They are residences but not dormitories. Associated with each house was a group of faculty and visiting fellows who regularly dined and spoke there, and who helped constitute each houseâs Senior Common Room. There was a staff of resident tutors, mainly graduate students, who taught sections of major courses and advised students in a variety of ways. And then there were the master and the senior tutor, also resident. The former presided over the collective life of the house; the latter was responsible for the students as individuals.
I should note here that the term senior tutor connoted a function that was chiefly educational. Harvard now calls them resident deans, because they came to do everything but educate, including directing students to mental-health resources and responding to the varied crises of a studentâs life in the pressure cooker that is the college.. Harvard dropped the term master in 2016 because it reeked of the antebellumplantation. (Oddly enough, this compunction has not prevented Harvard from continuing to offer masterâs degrees, for which it charges very healthy tuition.)
Harvard then took plagiarism seriouslyâand in one way still does, disciplining dozens of students every year for this gravest of academic sins. Even transgressions falling short of plagiarism could still constitute âmisuse of sources,â for which a yearâs probation and suspension from participation in extracurricular activities were the usual response. Plagiarists, meanwhileâthose who had lifted someone elseâs language without quotation marks or citationâwere bounced from the college for a year, during which time they were required to work at a nonacademic job (no year-long backpacking trip) and refrain from visiting Cambridge. They would be readmitted after submitting a statement that examined their original misdeed and reflected on it.
The senior tutor was the one who received any initial complaint from a faculty member, some of whom were (or feigned to be) shocked when they learned that plagiarism could have material consequences. They would assemble the dossier, counsel the student, and present the case to the administrative board, composed of all the senior tutors and a few faculty and deans, about 20 people in all. The senior tutor would present the studentâs case to his or her colleagues, and we would deliberate.
If the board voted to rusticate the offender, the student could make a personal appeal, which was surprisingly rare. After long conversations with their senior tutor, most of the students understood that they had gone seriously astray, and left with a feeling of, if not relief, then of catharsis. They could return to school with the slate wiped clean, and with much greater maturity and sense of purpose. This was, in part, because most plagiarists are not depraved or even lazy, but simply insecure. They came back as much more independent and self-reliant characters, which was what we wanted.
It was a very good system. Harvardâs approach to plagiarism then rested on the notion that even a disciplinary process should be educational. At its heart was the importance of accepting responsibility for oneâs actions. It was not enough to correct the errant document; it was necessary to look at oneself in the mirror and say, âI did this, and it was wrong.â I believe that this approach was rooted in Harvardâs lingering mission of developing leaders of integrity and courage.
A leader must begin with a deeply rooted sense of responsibility; from there one moves to accountability, the ability to own oneâs organizationâs failings. For example, if Jewish students are being harassed and threatened on the university campus where one is president, it means saying, âI own this. I will fix it,â in simple and unqualified terms.
The members of the administrative board were predominantly teachers and scholars, not administrators, and that was crucial. We did not bring in lawyers. We did not hire expensive plagiarism experts as consultants. We read the materials carefully (the dossiers could be quite thick), deliberated, and made a decision. If a senior tutor got carried away defending a student from their house, their colleagues would gently but firmly nail the case to the undisputed facts. And when faculty members tried to intercede, they were equally firmly told that they were responsible for the grading side of the education, and we were covering the disciplinary side.
It is undisputed that Claudine Gay used other scholarsâ language, often with the slightest modification or none, and occasionally without even a footnote acknowledgment. Were that not so, she would not have recently requested corrections to work dating back to her dissertation. I have looked at the evidence presented in various places, none of which has been controverted, and it is clear to me that this is plagiarism. For example, as The Harvard Crimson reports, her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation includes this paragraph:
The average turnout rate seems to increase linearly as African-Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. (If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinctâs racial mix, which is one way to think about bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatterplot. A linear form would only result if the changes in one raceâs turnout were compensated by changes in the turnout of the other race across the graph.)
A 1996 scholarly paper by Bradley Palmquist and Stephen Voss reads as follows:
The average turnout rate seems to decrease linearly as African Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinctâs racial mix, which is one description of bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot (resulting only when changes in one raceâs turnout rate somehow compensated for changes in the otherâs across the graph).
It is a pretty complete steal, with the bizarre substitution of âincreaseâ for âdecrease.â
Even if, in the most tolerant and sympathetic of readings, this and similar copying merely constitute âmisuse of sources,â it is disqualifying for a position of leadership at any university. Her failure to accept responsibility in stark and unqualified terms makes matters worse.
The Harvard Corporation has stood by President Gay, even as scandal has mounted. The New York Post reports that when it first raised the plagiarism accusations with Harvard, the response was not a comment on the evidence, but a 15-page letter from Harvardâs defamation lawyer. Instead of standing up for Harvardâs motto, Veritas, (âtruthâ), the corporation has hunkered down.
Students have a keen scent for the stink of hypocrisy; they understand Gayâs original misdeeds and the evasions of the Harvard Corporation. They may even realize that something has gone deeply awry with the university when a Harvard professor dismisses the claims as a right-wing attack and tells The New York Times,âIf it came from some other quarter, I might be granting [the accusations] some credence,â as though the facts depend on the politics of those who point them out.
I have no idea how as a teacher at Harvard today I could look an undergraduate in the eye and hold forth about why plagiarism is a violation of the values inherent in the academic enterprise. They would laugh, openly or secretly, at the corruption and double standards. And I would not blame them for doing so.
President Gay is in a tough spot. The Harvard Corporation deserves to be in a much tougher spot, because it has betrayed the values that the university once cherished and that it still proclaims. In both cases, the remedy indicated is the one we senior tutors applied to many a student years ago: fess up, withdraw, and reflect.
#Eliot A. Cohen#Claudine Gay#Claudine Gay scandal#Harvard#Harvard University#plagiarism#academic corruption#diversity hire#diversity equity and inclusion#diversity#equity#inclusion#DEI bureaucracy#religion is a mental illness
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
If yâall know Veronica Mars the oc and LoVe or Sethmer youâll know exactly what I mean by this!
ofc pope is Veronica Seth Cohen and Alec
Cleo is Summer Roberts and Elliott
JJ is Logan Echolls and leverage Parker
no one knows them like I know them!
#obx#jjpope#pope heyward#jj maybank#obx netflix#cleo anderson#summer roberts#seth cohen#the oc#veronica mars#logan and veronica#logan echolls#leverage#alec hardison#eliot x hardison#eliot x parker x hardison#eliot spencer#parker x hardison#parker leverage#leverage parker#sethmer#loVe#jjpopecleo#cleopope#popecleo
19 notes
·
View notes
Text
music taste: jewish artists singing about the story of samson and delilah
they Understand. i can't articulate exactly what they understand but they definitely Understand.
(songs are "samson" by regina spektor, "hallelujah" by leonard cohen, and "with samson in washington state" by mal blum)
138 notes
·
View notes
Text
Especially since it's Eliot Cohen making that bullshit argument
44 notes
·
View notes
Text
The poetry that inspired Jeff Buckley
Aimee Ferrier
Sun 1 October 2023 21:15, UK
Voices as incredible as the one belonging to Jeff Buckley donât come around too often. Unfortunately, after releasing one record, Grace, Buckley, with all his potential, was taken away too soon. At the age of 30, the singer went for a swim from which he never returned, drowning in the Mississippi River.
Yet, his legacy lives on as one of the most influential artists to emerge from the 1990s, and his music is widely celebrated today for its emotional and lyrical complexity. Not only did Buckley possess an otherworldly voice, but he was also an extremely gifted guitar player and writer, with all his talents combining to create a masterful body of work.
Even when Buckley was covering other artistsâ songs, such as âLilac Wineâ, âThe Other Womanâ and âHallelujahâ, he imbued the pieces with his own distinctive style. Yet, his penchant for covers wasnât a reflection of an aversion to writing. Buckley knew how to pen a stunningly poetic track, with songs like âLover, You Shouldâve Come Overâ and âMorning Theftâ suggesting that even if Buckley didnât have the vocal pipes he was gifted with, heâd get by just fine as a writer.
Buckley took inspiration from many different writers and musicians when writing his own songs. Musically, Buckley looked back to folk artists like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and, of course, his own father, Tim Buckley, from whom he was estranged. Elsewhere, he loved the work of Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the rich tones of Nina Simone, and Led Zeppelin, calling Robert Plant âmy manâ.
However, when it came to his literary inspirations, Buckley had an extensive book collection, which he no doubt looked to for ideas when writing his lyrics. He owned a lot of poetry, with Rainer Maria Rilke proving to be a particular favourite. Not only did Buckley own Dunio Elegies, Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations Poems from the Book of Hours, but he also owned his epistolary collection Letters to a Young Poet.
Buckley was also a fan of the classic American poet Walt Whitman, owning Leaves of Grass and From the Soil. Of course, no poetry collection is complete without copies of Arthur Rimbaudâs A Season in Hell and Illuminations, alongside some Charles Baudelaire â Buckley-owned Paris Spleen. The singer also owned the Selected Poems of confessional poet Anne Sexton and modernist writer T.S Eliot.
Check out Buckleyâs complete poetry collection below.
The poetry that inspired Jeff Buckley:
Dunio Elegies â Rainer Maria Rilke
Poems from the Book of Hours â Rilke
Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations â Rilke
Leaves of Grass â Walt Whitman
From This Soil â Whitman
The Odyssey â Homer
Early Work, 1970-1979Â â Patti Smith
You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense â Charles Bukowski
Selected Poems of Ezra Pound
The Complete Lyrics â Hank Williams
A Haiku Journey: Bashoâs Narrow Road to a Far Province â Matsuo Basho
Paris Spleen â Charles Baudelaire
The Captainâs Verses â Pablo Neruda
Selected Poems â T.S. Eliot
A Season in Hell and Illuminations â Arthur Rimbaud
Writing and Drawings â Bob Dylan
Ode to Walt Whitman â Federico Garcia Lorca
New Poems: 1962 â Robert Graves
Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems â Jim Carroll
Selected Poems of Anne Sexton â Anne Sexton
Selected Poems â John Shaw Neilson
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge â Demore Schwartz
The Collected Poems of Frank OâHara â Frank OâHara
Poems â Pier Paolo Pasolini
Space: And Other Poems â Eliot Katz
Tim Buckley Lyrics
#jeff buckley#jeffbuckley#The poetry that inspired Jeff Buckley#Amiee Ferrier#Dunio Elegies â Rainer Maria Rilke#Poems from the Book of Hours â Rilke#Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations â Rilke#Leaves of Grass â Walt Whitman#From This Soil â Whitman#The Odyssey â Homer#Early Work#1970-1979 â Patti Smith#You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense â Charles Bukowski#Selected Poems of Ezra Pound#The Complete Lyrics â Hank Williams#A Haiku Journey: Bashoâs Narrow Road to a Far Province â Matsuo Basho#Paris Spleen â Charles Baudelaire#The Captainâs Verses â Pablo Neruda#Selected Poems â T.S. Eliot#A Season in Hell and Illuminations â Arthur Rimbaud#Writing and Drawings â Bob Dylan#Ode to Walt Whitman â Federico Garcia Lorca#New Poems: 1962 â Robert Graves#Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems â Jim Carroll#Selected Poems of Anne Sexton â Anne Sexton#Selected Poems â John Shaw Neilson#Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge â Demore Schwartz#The Collected Poems of Frank OâHara â Frank OâHara#Poems â Pier Paolo Pasolini#Space: And Other Poems â Eliot Katz
28 notes
·
View notes
Text
âWhat will stick will be the videos of grandmothers dragged into captivity, children shot dead, young women stripped naked, corpses desecrated. For many Jews, the echoes are primal, and go back to the two-and-a-half-millennia-old Book of Lamentations: âHer virgins are afflicted ⊠Her young children are gone into captivity ⊠The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets ⊠Thou has slaughtered unsparingly.â The scenes are ones that scar so much of Jewish history, from the massacres of the Crusades to the pogroms of the 19th and early 20th centuries, to the ultimate horror of the Holocaust. They are deep and indelible in the psyche of even the Israeli who surfs on Saturday and doesnât mind a ham sandwich; they will color everything that follows hereafter.â
âEliot A. Cohen for The Atlantic
34 notes
·
View notes
Text
John Burnside
Poet, winner of the TS Eliot and Forward prizes and the Whitbread poetry award, memoirist, novelist and academic
Being John Burnside was a remorseless exercise in human resilience. Even after he left behind childhood deprivation and became a professor at an ancient university, there were always demons to be banished, myths to be busted and issues urgently to be addressed for Burnside, who has died aged 69 after a short illness. Writing was his best revenge, the means by which a sense of stability could be imposed on personal turbulence.
It was his abusive, alcoholic father George who taught him how to make a living by telling stories, though the stories his father told were more often than not lies. âNo one,â recalled John in A Lie About My Father (2006), the first of three celebrated memoirs, âever did find out where my father came from. He was really a nobody: a foundling, a throwaway. The lies he told were intended to conceal this fact, and they were so successful that I didnât know, until after he died, that heâd been left on a doorstep in West Fife in the late spring of 1926, by person or persons unknown.â
Johnâs debut collection of poetry, The Hoop, appeared in 1988, and few were the following years when there was no new book from him. His poetry, like his prose, often drew on the past and his own experience, such as The Woman Taken in Adultery, from A Normal Skin (1997), and Memories of a Non-existent Childhood, from Still Life with Feeding Snake (2017): âFor years I was lost in the details / heart like a flower, / tending towards the light, / the fog of the cursive, / the beauties of mistranslation.â
For his 2011 collection Black Cat Bone, he won the TS Eliot prize and the Forward prize; he was one of only four poets â the others being Ted Hughes, Sean OâBrien and Jason Allen-Paisant â to win both prizes for the same book. In 2000, The Asylum Dance won the Whitbread poetry award. A Lie About My Father was chosen as the Scottish Arts Councilâs nonfiction book of the year and the Saltire Society Scottish book of the year.
Last year he was awarded the David Cohen prize for literature in recognition of his entire body of work. Previous winners include VS Naipaul, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing and Seamus Heaney.
Secrets, passed from father to son, defined Johnâs youth and obsessed his adulthood. He was born in Dunfermline, but was raised in a prefab in Cowdenbeath. Once a thriving mining community, nicknamed âthe Chicago of Fifeâ, by the time of Johnâs birth it had lost its raison dâetre and everyone who could escape did.
For the Burnsides the hoped-for nirvana was the new town of Corby, Northamptonshire, which attracted so many unemployed Scots to its steelworks it was known as Little Scotland. By then, however, as John recalled in his memoir, his father had begun to fall apart, physically and mentally; his much-loved mother, Theresa, did her best to keep up appearances, attending mass and reading Mills & Boons by the yard.
For his part, John took to smoking dope and playing âchildish pranksâ for which he was expelled from school. By 16 he had progressed to LSD, which he found more rewarding than the communion host. âAcid did what the host failed to do,â he wrote. âAcid was the only real sacrament to which I had access ⊠Here I was, the boy who had seriously thought about a vocation. Now, though the source wasnât quite what Iâd expected, I had one.â
Of an autodidactic tendency, he read deeply and widely, claiming he was âa Seneca nut into my 20sâ. He attended Cambridge College of Arts and Technology (âfor something to doâ), thereafter becoming a computer software engineer. He began to publish poetry in the 1980s, and became a full-time writer, moving back to Fife in 1996 after a long period in Surrey.
In 1997 came The Dumb House, the first of Johnâs eight novels. Fantastical, disturbing, chilling, it is full of startlingly arresting sentences that provoked critics such as Karl Miller to describe the author as an âextraordinarily good writerâ. Rereading it recently, I caught echoes of Proust: âFor a long time, I refused to speak â or so my Mother told me.â
For John, his formative years in Cowdenbeath and Corby were the ore from which he sought to extract diamonds. In Living Nowhere (2003), for example, he returned to the Corby of the 70s, where the hope of a better future for its transplanted inhabitants and their offspring is dashed by violence that hangs over the town like the ash and stench from the steelworks.
His taste was catholic, his enthusiasms boundless and his curiosity infectious. In his third memoir, I Put a Spell on You (2014), he describes incidents from his life and muses on popular music, classical literature, old and foreign movies, Diane Arbus and Mel Lyman, the American folk musician and film-maker who provided a link between Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol.
The bookâs title is taken from the much-covered song written by Screaminâ Jay Hawkins, another maker of his own myths. The version John first heard as a nine-year-old was by Nina Simone and whenever he heard her or anyone else sing he was transported back to Cowdenbeath. There, as a teenage barfly, he heard a girl called Annie sing it in a cafe, not long after which she was murdered.
Burly, bespectacled, latterly bearded, John taught for many years in the English department at St Andrews University, where he became professor in creative writing in 2009. Among his colleagues were Douglas Dunn, Robert Crawford, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson.
As my wife and I witnessed when we paid an annual visit to the university, John was an impassioned and eloquent educator and revered by his students. Not so long ago, he sent us a copy of his 2019 book The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century, generously inscribed and thanking us for âthe criticism and the encouragement over many yearsâ. Not many writers are so forgiving of reviewers.
In 2018, writing in the London Review of Books, John told how he was suffering from sleep apnoea, âa condition where the patient stops breathing while asleep, then starts awake and desperately gasps in some air, before settling down again, all in a matter of secondsâ. Two years later, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, he suffered âhuge heart failureâ, as he described it, and was given a âdo not resuscitateâ order by doctors who feared he would not pull through. Somehow he did and continued to work at full pelt.
In Ruin, Blossom, his most recent collection of poetry, published earlier this year, John explored ageing, mortality and the parlous state of the environment. Having long since rejected organised religion, he labelled himself a âdeep ecologist/anarchistâ. He was particularly exercised about the building of a windfarm beside a nature reserve near his home a few miles south of St Andrews, not because it spoiled his view but because of the harm it would do to bats, birds and other wildlife.
He wrote regularly for publications including the New Statesman, the TLS, the New Yorker and the Guardian, and became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1998.
He is survived by his wife, Sarah (nee Dunsby), whom he married in 1996, their two children, Lucas and Gil, and their grandson, Apollo.
đ John Burnside, writer, born 19 March 1955; died 29 May 2024
Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books�
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Nor can the troops on the front line be sheltered from the brutal truths about their leaders and the war itself that Prigozhin uttered on his abortive march on the Kremlin. Someone at last has said it, and the someone who did, brute though he may be, is the kind of leader who visited the front lines, paid his men and their survivors well, and has a kind of thuggish charisma that Putin lacks. Presumably, Ukrainian psychological-warfare experts are spreading the Prigozhin videos and audio recordings far and wide among their enemies.
 â  The Three Logics of Russia's Prigozhin Putsch
#eliot a. cohen#current events#politics#russian politics#warfare#russo-ukrainian war#2022 russian invasion of ukraine#wagner group rebellion#russia#yevgeny prigozhin#vladimir putin#wagner group
6 notes
·
View notes
Photo
[U.S. Embassy Warsaw]Â ::: A massive crowd turns out in Warsaw to hear President Biden
* * * *
âSymbols matter: a Kennedy or a Reagan at the Berlin Wall, a Churchill with a cigar and a bowler, for that matter a green-clad Zelensky growling, âI need ammunition, not a ride.â Simply by taking the hazardous trip to Kyiv, Biden made a strategic move of cardinal importance.âÂ
â Eliot Cohen, the Atlantic
* * * *
President Biden, speaking to an enthusiastic crowd outside Polandâs Royal Castle, urged the worldâs nations to recommit to a unified defense of Ukraine, saying global democracy was at stake and accusing Russia of committing crimes against humanity through its âabhorrentâ acts against civilians. A few hours earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing a joint session of the Russian parliament, reiterated his attacks on what he called Ukraineâs âneo-Nazi regimeâ and, in a surprise move, announced that Moscow was suspending its participation in New START, the last remaining U.S.-Russia nuclear arms agreement.
U.S. officials said that the timing of the two speeches was coincidental and that Biden had decided long ago to travel to the region for the first anniversary of the brutal war. But if the president did not plan his remarks as a response to Putinâs, they nonetheless often sounded like a rebuttal of the Russian president.Putin said during his televised state of the nation address that Western elites âstartedâ the conflict in conjunction with Ukraine.Â
Biden, in his address, responded that it was Putin who âchose this war,â adding, âThe West was not plotting to attack Russia, as Putin said today.âBiden also used soaring terms to cast the war, as he has before, as one front in a worldwide struggle between autocracy and democracy. âWhen Russia invaded, it wasnât just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,â Biden said before a large crowd on a cold night with a colorful backdrop. âEurope was being tested. America was being tested. NATO is being tested. All democracies are being tested. And the questions we face are as simple as they are profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way?â
[Washington Post]
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
April 30, 2023: Oral History of Insatiability, Jason Myers
Oral History of Insatiability Jason Myers
I woke in the wreck of history
still drowsy, a dryness in my
bed, my bones. Would you
like fingers, the Lord asked,
& gave me plenty. There was
no music, no garden in them.
I wanted to be touched the way
I had touched, delicately, but
with great passion. If you want
another kind of lover, Leonard
Cohen crooned. Not my will,
Martin Luther King intoned,
but God's. I wanted a word
for every surface, for the belly
& the underbelly, the line between
the lines. There was a secret
name inside every living thing,
a song underneath every song.
What happened then, I asked,
meaning both before & next.
The Lord said Kabul. Said
manifest destiny. Said Rembrandt
said Bordeaux said Dakota
said Chelsea Hotel said Egyptian
cotton said Homer. The Greek
poet, I asked. No. Homer Plessy.
Oh, I said. I see. But I did not.
Lulls, curtains, continuations.
You want company, the Lord asked,
& made New Orleans, oceans,
rye bread, Cointreau. There
were some companions sent
by another party. There were
days smothered in solitude,
nights when I thought, if only
I could sleep, if only...but I
could not complete the sentence.
Are you hungry, the Lord asked.
Oh my. Oh yes. Oh my yes.
--
Also by Jason Myers: Hotel Orpheus
Jason is an excellent poet and human being. His first book was just published, and itâs gorgeous: Maker of Heaven &.
Today in:Â
2022:Â Try to Praise the Mutilated World, Adam Zagajewski 2021: In Defense of a Long Engagement, Mairead Small Staid 2020: Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness, Mary Oliver 2019: Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver 2018: Born Yesterday, Philip Larkin 2017: Thus, He Spoke His Quietus, Thomas Lux 2016: Trees, W.S. Merwin 2015: Today and Two Thousand Years from Now, Philip Levine 2014: from For a Long Time I Have Wanted to Write a Happy Poem, Richard Jackson 2013: Tear It Down, Jack Gilbert 2012: from An Atlas of the Difficult World, Adrienne Rich 2011: Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, Naomi Shihab Nye 2010: from Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman 2009: from The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 2008: from Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot 2007: Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot 2006: Preludes, T.S. Eliot 2005: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot
--Â
I donât know where this month went! As always, thanks for letting me spam you, and for your kind notes.
More to come in 11 short months. In the meantime, check it out, you can:
- Visit a random poem sent in the past at april-is.tumblr.com/random - Browse poems by topic - Or skim them chronologically
Until next time, mes amours.
Martha
54 notes
·
View notes
Text
Ships that have already qualified (read before submitting):
Jude Lizowski/Jonesy Garcia
Tyler Kennedy "TK" Strand/Carlos Reyes
Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/Gwen Stacey
Willow Rosenberg/Winifred "Fred" Burkle
Francine Frensky/Muffy Crosswire
Susan Ivanova/Marcus Cole
Kate Kane (Batwoman)/Renee Montoya
Barry B. Benson/Vanessa Bloome
Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Willow Rosenberg/Tara Maclay
Jack Zimmermann/Eric "Bitty" Bittle
Justin "Ransom" Oluransi/Adam "Holster" Birkholtz
Danny/Reuven
Larissa "Lara" Bogdan/Jasmine
Kelsey Pokly/Isabella "Stacks" Alvarado
Rebecca Bunch/Audra Levine
Rebecca Bunch/Greg Serrano
Rebecca Bunch/Nathaniel Plimpton
Samantha "Sam" Manson/Danniel "Danny" Fenton
Bruce Wayne (Batman)/Selina Kyla (Catwoman)
Bruce Wayne (Batman)/Clark Kent (Superman)
Clark Kent (Superman)/Lois Lane
Harley Quinn/Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy)
Barney Guttman/Logan Nguyen
Leah/Chanan
Shay Goldstein/Dominic Yun
Marvin/Whizzer
Trina/Mendel Weisenbachfeld
Perchik/Hodel
Tzeitel/Motel
Monica Gellar/Chandler Bing
Molly McGee/Libby Stein Torres
Rachel Berry/Noah Puckerman
Fiddleford McGucket/Stanford Pines
Cristina Yang/Owen Hunt
Cristina Yang/Preston Burke
Levi Schmidt/Nico Kim
Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
James Wilson/Gregory House
The Baker and/The Baker's Wife
Kim Possible/Ron Stoppable
The Jewish People/The Shabbat Bride
Alec Hardison/Parker
Max Eisenhardt (Magneto)/Charles Xavier (Professor X)
Steve Rogers (Captain America)/James "Bucky" Barnes
Arnold "Arnie" Roth/Michael Bech
Arnold "Arnie" Roth/Steve Rogers (Captain America)
Billy Kaplan (Wiccan)/Teddy Altman (Hulkling)
Bobby Drake (Iceman)/Hank McCoy (Beast)
Bobby Drake (Iceman)/Johnny Storm (The Human Torch)
Layla El Faouly/Mark Spector (Moon Knight)
Matthew Hawk (Two-Gun Kid II)/Clint Barton (Hawkeye)
Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/Betty Brant
Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/Eugene "Flash" Thompson
Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/ Felicia Hardy
Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/ Harry Osborn
Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde
Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/Mary Jane "MJ" Watson
Peter Parker (Spider-Man)/Wade Wilson (Deadpool)
Steve Rogers/Bernadette "Bernie" Rosenthal
Wanda Maximoff/The Vision
Midge Maisel/Susie Myerson
Hal Emmerich (Otacon)/Solid Snake
Casey Goldberg-Calderon/Lunella Lafayette
Fran Fine/Max Sheffield
Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Winston Schmidt/Cece Parekh
David Jacobs/Jack Kelly
Seth Cohen/Summer Roberts
Scout Touzani/Elias Wyrick
KJ Brandman/Mac Coyle
Lavinia Asimov/Poison Oak
Phineas Flynn/Isabella Garcia-Shapiro
Anon's Mom/Dad
The person reading this & their partner
Jerry Seinfeld/Cosmo Kramer
Simon Lewis/Isabel Lightwood
Danielle/Maya
Bram Greenfeld/Simon Spier
Miryem Mandelstam/The Staryk King
David Rose/Patrick Brewer
James T Kirk/S'chn T'gai Spock
Worf Rozhenko/Jadzia Dax
Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Brian Jeeter/Krejjh
Bobby Singer/Rufus Turner
Jonah Simms/Amy Sosa
Reish Lakish/Rabbi Yochanen
King David/Yonatan
Devorah/Barak
Moses/Tzipporah
Ruth/Naomi
Yaakov/The Angel
Rowan Roth/Neil Mcnair
Klaus Hargreeves/Dave Katz
Cecil Palmer/Carlos The Scientist
Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Little Ash/Uriel
Lucille "Lucy" Kensington/Dr. Edison "Ed" Tucker
Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Anshel/Avigdor
Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Wanda Maximoff (The Scarlet Witch)/Jericho Drumm
Bruce Wayne (Batman)/Shondra Kinsolving
Bruce Wayne (Batman)/Talia Al Ghul
Ben Grimm (The Thing)/Alicia Masters
Velma Dinkley/Daphne Blake
Velma Dinkley/Marcie Fleach
Didi Pickles/Stu Pickles
Velma Dinkley/Coco Diablo
Babushka (Tatiana)/Dedushka (Ivan)
Kitty Pryde/Illyana Rasputin
Natasha Romanoff/Wanda Maximoff
Marc Spector (Moon Knight)/Clint Barton (Hawkeye)
Hillel/Shammai
S'chn T'gai Spock/James T Kirk/Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy
S'chn T'gai Spock/Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Frankie Bergstein/Grace Hanson
Annie Edison/Jeff Winger
Maxine Myers/Paula Cohen
Baby Houseman/Johnny Castle
Tevye/Golde
Michael "Mike" Wazowski/Celia Mae
Talmudic couple having gay sex in the attic
Tim Drake/Kon El (Conner Kent)
Violet Baudelaire/Quigley Quagmire
Reuben Kent/Feliks Kaufmann
Anshel/Avigdor/Hadass
Amram/Zelikman
Anshel/Hadass
SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN UNTIL MAY 8, 2023 @ 12:00 AM EDT
#info#if you have any reasons a ship shouldn't be on this list let me know since I don't have the ability to fully vet everything#there are a small handful im still considering#will update as more submissions trickle in
56 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Stuff I Read in June/July 2023
Stuff I Extra Liked is Bold
I forgot to do it last month so you get a double feature
Books
Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee
Heteropessimism (Essay Cluster)
The Biological Mind, Justin Garson (2015) Ch. 5-7
Sacred and Terrible Air, Robert Kurvitz
Wage Labour and Capital, Karl Marx
Short Fiction
Beware the Bite of the Were-Lesbian (zine), H. C. Guinevere
Childhood Homes (and why we hate them) by qrowscant (itch.io)
piele by slugzuki (itch.io)
ŰšÚÙâŰ§Û Ú©Ù ŰŽÚ©Ù ÚŻŰ±ŰšÙ Ù
ÛÚ©ŰŽÛŰŻŰ ÙۧÙکۧۯÛÙ Ù۱Ù
ŰšÚÙ ÙŰ§Û Ú©Ù ÛŰź ÙŰČŰŻÙŰŻŰ Ù
ۧک۳ÛÙ
ÚŻÙ۱کÛ
ÙŸŰłŰ±Ú©Û ŰŻŰ± ŰȘŰčÙÛŰš ŰȘŰšÙÚ©Ű§Ű±Ű ÙÛÙÛۧÙ
ŰąÛ۱ÛŰŽ
KĂŒĂ§ĂŒk Kara Balık, Samed Behrengi
Phil Mind
The Hornswoggle Problem, Patricia Churchland, Â Journal of Consciousness Studies 3.5-6 (1996): 402-408
What is it Like to be a Bat? Thomas Nagel, (https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674594623.c15)
Epiphenomenal Qualia, Frank Jackson, Consciousness and emotion in cognitive science. Routledge, 1998. 197-206
Why You Canât Make a Computer that Feels Pain, Daniel Dennett, Synthese, vol. 38, no. 3, 1978, pp. 415â56
Where Am I? Daniel Dennett
Can Machines Think? Daniel Dennett
Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons, Derek Parfit (https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118922590.ch8)
The Extended Mind, Andy Clark & David Chalmers, Analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7â19
Uploading: A Philosophical Analysis, David Chalmers (https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118736302.ch6)
If You Upload, Will You Survive? Joseph Corabi & Susan Schneider (https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118736302.ch8)
If You Canât Make One, You Donât Know How It Works, Fred Dretske (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4975.1994.tb00299.x)
Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Alan Turing
Minds, Brains, and Programs, John Searle (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00005756)
What is it Like to Have a Gender Identity? Florence Ashley (https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzac071)
Climbing towards NLU: On Meaning, Form, and Understanding in the Age of Data, Emily M. Bender & Alexander Koller (10.18653/v1/2020.acl-main.463)
On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? đŠ Emily M. Bender et al. (https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922)
The Great White Robot God, David Golumbia
Superintelligence: The Idea that Eats Smart People, Maciej Ceglowski
Misc. Articles
Ebb and Flow of Azeri and Persian in Iran: A Longitudinal Study in the City of Zanjan, Hamed Zandi (https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110694277-007)
WTF is Happening? An Overview â Watching the World Go Bye, Eliot Jacobson
Using loophole, Seward County seizes millions from motorists without convicting them of crimes, Natalia Alamdari
Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens, Cathy J. Cohen, Feminist Theory Reader. Routledge, 2020. 311-323
Is the Rectum a Grave? Leo Bersani (https://doi.org/10.2307/3397574)
Why Petroleum Did Not Save the Whales, Richard York (https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023117739217)
âSpider-Verseâ Animation: Four Artists on Making the Sequel, Chris Lee
Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution, David T. Ho (https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00953-x)
Fights, beatings and a birth: Videos smuggled out of L.A. jails reveal violence, neglect, Keri Blakinger
Capitalismâs Court Jester: Slavoj ĆœiĆŸek, Gabriel Rockhill
The Tyranny of Structurelessness, Jo Freeman
Domenico Losurdo interviewed about Friedrich Nietzsche
Keeping Some of the Lights On: Redefining Energy Security, Kris De Decker
Gays, Crossdressers, and Emos: Nonormative Masculinities in Militarized Iraq, Achim Rohde
On the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin
Our Technology, Zeyad el Nabolsy
Towards a Historiography of Gundamâs One Year War, Ian Gregory
Imperialism and the Transformation of Values into Prices, Torkil Lauesen & Zak Cope
#reading prog#one day i will be able to read books well again#most of the things that aren't linked i can provide directly upon request#those dennett citations are hard to track down
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
Odds & Ends: September 6, 2024
Macbeth. Ever since my podcast with Eliot Cohen on what Shakespeare can teach us about power and leadership, Iâve had a hankering to read more of the Bard. But I read somewhere that to really get the full effect of Shakespeareâs plays, it helps to hear the plays performed instead of merely reading them. So I downloaded a performance of Macbeth done by the Folgers Theatre on my Audible app and listened to it during my morning walks. It was great! So many good lessons on the dangers of unchecked ambition. Iâve already downloaded King Richard III, and it will be my next morning walk companion. If youâve wanted to get more Shakespeare in your life, try listening to him instead of reading him. Flint and Tinder Waxed Canvas Trucker Jacket. The summer heat broke here in Oklahoma this week, and weâre starting to get a faint whiff of fall. Which means Iâll soon be busting out my favorite piece of autumnal clothing: the Flint and Tinder Waxed Canvas Jacket. Iâve had mine since 2016, and itâs only gotten more handsome with time. The F&T Trucker Jacket is pricey, but it will give you years of use. Iâll probably still be wearing mine in another eight years. Read my full review of the Flint and Tinder Waxed Canvas Trucker Jacket here. EA Sports NCAA College Football 25. Overall, I havenât been a big fan of the changes that NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) has brought to college sports. But one bright spot is that it ushered in the return of one of my favorite video games from high school: EA Sports NCAA College Football. (The game had been on a decade-long hiatus because of legal disputes over the use of playersâ likenesses in the game). Gus and I have been playing it together the past few weeks, and we both really enjoy it. Itâs fun to see all the little traditions from each college that the designers have put into the game. The playbook is a lot of fun, too. Back in high school, our football team ran the triple option that Air Force runs, so Iâve been playing as the Falcons to digitally relive my Friday night lights glory days. Itâs just been cool playing a video game that I enjoyed as a young man with my son who is now a young man. The Natural. This Robert Redford baseball classic was my latest zone 2 cardio watch. I havenât enjoyed a movie this much in a long time. First, the golden-hued cinematography bathes everything in a warm glow of nostalgia. It feels good just seeing the moving images on the screen. Second, the story is top-notch. Itâs a baseball flick, but the movie makes obvious allusions to Greek epic poetry, particularly the Odyssey. Third, the acting is stellar: Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Wilford Brimley, Kim Basinger, Robert DuvallâŠsuch an all-star cast. I first watched this movie as a kid; it hit different watching it as a middle-aged man. Highly recommend. Quote of the Week Nothing can lift the heart of man Like manhood in a fellow-man. The thought of heavenâs great King afar But humbles usâtoo weak to scan But manly greatness men can span, And feel the bonds that draw. âHerman Melville Help support independent publishing. Make a donation to The Art of Manliness! Thanks for the support! http://dlvr.it/TCwPtr
2 notes
·
View notes