Poets in dialogue, dialogues in poets

Is there something noticeably peculiar about dialogues with poets when transformed into writing, be it in electronic or printed form? The pauses and hesitations, the thrust and parry, the slurrings and overlappings of ordinary speech by and large disappear. In their place is an artifice, a deliberate creation of a script, with questions and responses clearly marked for our attention. Might we be approaching a tidied duologue which, some might also cynically remark, largely reproduces a dual monologue? Moreover, when poets are in dialogue, with whom or what does the poet converse

The securitization of citizenship in a ‘Segregated City’:A reflection on Rio’s Pacifying Police Units

The Pacification Police Units UPPs implemented in Rio de Janeiro since 2008 have as one of their stated goals the promotion of the integration between the pacified favelas and the formal city, aiming to overcome the view of Rio as a divided city. Intending to problematize the reasoning behind this stated goal in order to question the UPPs very foundations, this article examines the political and sociospatial background in which they were introduced. The implementation and operation of the UPPs is outlined in the context of the militarization of Rios spaces, and especially of its urban poor regions, within an analysis of what assumptions about favelas and slum residents the UPPs imply. The UPPs are analyzed in dialogue with Giorgio Agambens work as a sovereign act of drawing lines of distinction between lives worth living and politically worthless Others. It becomes clear that they are guilty of articulating and reinforcing what Teresa Caldeira has named the talk of crime, a Manicheistic discourse through which Brazilians articulate and cope with their daily encounter with violence. The disjunctive nature of Brazils inclusively inegalitarian democracy, as explored by James Holston, is emphasized. Brazil emerges as a post-dictatorial country, in which neoliberal reforms and democratic opening have simultaneously implied an increasingly authoritarian penal state that targets the urban marginalized as its internal enemies

Sappho and Anacreon in Plato’s Phaedrus

Plato’s praise of the poets Sappho and Anacreon at Phaedrus 235c is a sincere tribute to their vivid presentations of the shock of love. Allusions to the lyric poets in the prologue and Socrates’ narrative of soul support Plato’s exploration of the relationship between mania and self-control. Plato analyses the power-dynamic within a soul experiencing erotic desire and in response to the poets creates an intricate picture of how the force and energy of eros is absorbed, transferred and redirected

Slanted Truths: The Gay Science as Nietzsche's Ars Poetica

This essay derives its focus on poetry from the subtitle of Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft: “la gaya scienza.” Nietzsche appropriated this phrase from the phrase “gai saber” used by the Provençal knight-poets (or troubadours) of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries — the first lyric poets of the European languages — to designate their Ars Poetica or “art of poetry.” I will begin with an exploration of Nietzsche’s treatment of poets and poetry as a subject matter, closely analyzing his six aphorisms which deal explicitly with poets and poetry. Having considered The Gay Science as a text about poetry, I will then briefly explore three further ways in which The Gay Science can be thought of as itself a kind of poetry. The result of these analyses is an understanding of Nietzsche’s own understanding of philosophy (and of the best way to live) as also a form of poetry

Riddling soul: John Donne, Theatrical Performer of His Various Selves and Maker of an Oddly Modern Music

John Donne has been a consistency misplaced poet, too often simplified or traduced. Recent scholarship, however, has revealed him as a manifold author very difficult to classify. Maybe the tag "Metaphysical Poets" should be dropped from him and his purported school, and replaced by the more pertinent description "Mannerist Poets"

Darío, Borges, Neruda and the Ancient Quarrel between Poets and Philosophers

There is a paradox of in teaching subversive literature: university teachers are funded by society and impose on Dionysiac trances a culture of examinations and a comforting rationality. From within the safe institutional framework of the university, we constantly implement Plato's expulsion of the poets from the public arena because they arouse and confuse our minds. This analysis will explore this Nietzschean conflict in three Spanish American poets and simultaneously outline and defend the excessive way poets read other texts as they re-enact this 'ancient' quarrel between poetry and philosophy, in terms of the imperative, or social burden, of having to be responsibly 'Latin American'

Resources for the study of nineteenth-century American poetry : a selective guide

This survey essay provides an overview of print and electronic resources for the study of nineteenth-century American poetry. As does the volume as a whole, it focuses on (currently) less-studied poets such as the sentimental-domestic tradition (Lydia Huntley Sigourney, Frances Sargent Osgood) and the schoolroom/fireside poets (Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, William Cullen Bryant)

BOOK REVIEW OF DEAD POETS SOCIETY WRITTEN BY N.H. KLEINBAUM

This review analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of N.H. Kleinbaum's Dead Poets Society. Dead Poets Society is a novel that tells a story about a journey of an English literature teacher who provides non-conventional teaching methods in literature. This review explores the strengths and the weaknesses of N.H. Kleinbaum's Dead Poets Society by reviewing its elements. They are theme, plot, and characters. This novel has strengths that make it as a good reading. The strengths of the novel are theme and plot. The weakness of the novel is the character aspect. The author tells too much about the additional figures. The goal of this study is to understand the novel clearly. Therefore, the reader can know the opinion of the author about the content of the novel