Pages are cavernous places, white at entrance, black in absorption. Echo. If I’m transformed by language, I am often crouched in footnote or blazing in title. Where in the body do I begin; What’s your deal with burnout, my librarian aka Mr. Minus? After several months of listening to me speak from your shelves, you’ve […]
The Rag and Bone Bookshop of the Heart – after William Butler Yeats’ ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’ and the poetry anthology – a gift from your mother – edited by James Hillman, Michael Meade and Robert Bly. On September 25th, 2017, back when I was still alive (albeit barely) and you were still a classicist […]
‘the library of images unseen,’ [is] a radical alternative to the garbage-images of the video-idiots of our time. – Mario Perniola Fellow Reader, I realize that I has started these dispatches very much in the middle of things and you must be wondering who exactly is speaking. Please understand that I cannot tell you the […]
Holiness is what is dear to the gods. Who said that? I dunno but it’s not helpful. Never mind, ignore it. Let’s check-in instead. So, how are you coping? Healthy and sane? My starting position (forced on each of us, black reader and white writer, by this writing and our society) were the sites of […]
…a collective choreography of banal movements…[1] …even protesting a museum exhibition is still a form of participation…[2] …not even if I had ten tongues and ten mouths…[3] …a Roman would always think we…[4] …Judith beheading Holoferenes: make art history scream…[5] …at the Old Library Wex’s book starts to come alive…[6] [1] Hey you, yes you, […]
Too General or Arcane? Didactic or Funny? Introducing The Digital Democratising Classics Library: Maggenti: I think that the tension that emerges around AIDS is that it’s not a gay disease, right? But, in fact, there are a lot of gay men who have AIDS. So, in fact, it’s gay/lesbian people who are doing the work […]
This is the fourth and final preparatory post before we embark on the project “Our Ancient Group Material” with the participants of the “Democratising Classics” panel over the next four weekly posts. In many ways, these four preliminary posts, taken together, mirror the four posts to come in that they use the structure of Group […]
Today in my class I, Tiresias: Ovid’s Mythical Women and Contemporary Feminist Art, we are reading books 5 and 6 of the Roman poet’s epic Metamorphoses. Midway through book 5, we encounter the song of the Muses (which includes, among others, the tale of Proserpina/Persephone’s abduction by Pluto/Hades) which is part of a contest with […]
In a letter to Atticus (Att. 4. 8. 2), Cicero expresses his delight at the installation of some new bookshelves in an oddly convoluted and high-flown fashion: postea uero, quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit, mens addita uidetur meis aedibus. qua quidem in re mirifica opera Dionysi et Menophili tui fuit. nihil uenustius quam illa tua […]
